A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Federal Takeover of Health Care

The Funny Thing – It Didn’t Happen

The fun part of watching Conservatives pontificate, assuming there is a fun part, is watching them assert things that are just not factually correct.  For example to listen to Conservatives the Obama health care law was a complete and total Federal control of health care and health care decision, where un-named Federal bureaucrats would decide life and death.

The reality of course is that none of this is true, and it turns out the Obama administration is allowing the states a huge amount of flexibility in designing their health care systems under the new law.

The Obama administration Tuesday issued new rules to implement several key provisions of the health-care-overhaul law, giving states some additional discretion over plans sold within their borders.

The long-awaited rules underscore that the millions of customers who get new insurance through the law will see their plans vary from state to state.

Wow, that can’t be right, that sounds like something Conservatives would support and we know they don’t support any health care reform that doesn’t take money from households and give it to insurance companies or take health care funding that is provided by government and shift it to households.  But it is right.  For example, there is this.

. . . the administration said it would let states choose whether to ban insurers from taking into account consumers' tobacco use when setting prices for their policies.

And also there is this.

The federal government also expanded requirements for prescription-drug coverage from previous proposals, but it left states with different options to choose from, as well as responsibility for enforcement.

And in another provision sure to anger Conservatives the Administration made even more concessions to the states.

The new requirements also are likely to leave up to states questions such as the breadth of habilitative services for people with disabilities that insurers must cover, and whether family plans sold on the exchanges should be required to cover relatives such as grandchildren or stepchildren who may be living in a household.

And why would Conservatives be angered by all of this?  Because it nicely refutes their positions on health care reform.  But there is good news for Conservatives, like every other issue they don’t have to have reality based positions, they can keep on peddling their un-truths because, well because that’s what they do.