GOP Blackmails NFL To Stop Them From Helping Obamacare

by Stuart Shapiro

The Obama Administration has asked professional sports league to promote health insurance exchanges, so that people know about the opportunity to get affordable health insurance (and don’t have to pay the penalty for not doing so).  The GOP reaction?

The top two Republicans in the Senate released letters Friday urging the commissioners of the National Football League and other major sports leagues not to promote the 2010 health care overhaul law.

Why threaten the NFL?  Well because, er, um, it’s Obamacare darnit!

The reason the Senate minority leadership sent these letters is because they desperately hope to sabotage the post-reform health care system. As McConnell and Cornyn see it, if sports leagues help the government get the word out about, and Americans take advantage of the benefits they’re entitled to, then the Affordable Care Act will succeed.

And success for “Obamacare” isn’t something GOP officials are prepared to tolerate, so they’re using their public offices to pressure the private sector to help undermine the law’s efficacy.

Yup, score political points at the expense of helping possible beneficiaries, and use threats to do so.  Your Republican leadership.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.