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Political gridlock3/27/2023 They point out, for example, that Democrats in Congress did as much as the Republicans did to kill the Clinton healthcare bill.Įuropean parliamentary systems are also plagued by gridlock, particularly in multi-party states where no party or coalition can get a working majority, as happened, for example, last spring in Italy. Some, however, disagree with this diagnosis. Our government seems to be too gridlocked to actually pass needed reforms. ![]() Not always greener in other political systemsīy contrast, parliamentary systems like those of the UK, in which the legislative and executive powers are controlled by the same party, seem to supply much more policy flexibility. Political scientists speak of “veto points”, the places in our policymaking structure at which an initiative can be brought to a screeching halt.Īnd the US Constitution does have rather a lot of them, located everywhere from Congressional committees to the Oval Office, the Supreme Court, and the bureaucracy. To our hypothetical left-leaning health care activist, all this might look like an indictment of our system of government. Next they went after the employer requirements, and we now have yet another party-line Supreme Court ruling that it violates the religious liberty of a crafting conglomerate named Hobby Lobby to require it to pay the premiums for an insurance plan that allows the women they employ to acquire contraception. The Supreme Court, in a party-line vote, held that Congress lacked the authority to do that, permitting states to refuse the money and the expansion and undermining the administration’s attempt to create a uniform national system of health care access. The bill was less lucky in a challenge brought in the same case against the Medicaid expansion, which provided states with funding to expand health coverage for the poor in exchange for requiring them to do so. The challengers lost that one, if barely, thanks to a surprise vote by Republican-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts. Individual mandate was attacked on the grounds that the federal government lacked the authority to make people buy health insurance. This aspect of the policy was designed to eliminate an economic problem called “adverse selection,” which is what happens when only the sickest and most expensive to insure actually buy policies. ![]() Accordingly, opponents of the legislation immediately started filing lawsuit after lawsuit.įirst, they challenged the individual mandate, the requirement that people actually get health insurance. Shortly thereafter the “public option,” a provision that could have allowed citizens to select a government insurer in competition with private insurers, was also dropped.Įven when the President managed to push the bill, limping and bleeding from countless wounds, through Congress, there was one branch of the federal government that had not yet had a crack at it. This meant government could not act as the sole primary insurer, as is the case in so many of our other liberal democracies such as Canada and the UK. Then, President Obama managed to enact the Affordable Care Act, but was forced by opposition to include a number of compromises that undermined the goal of making health care accessible to all Americans.įirst, single-payer health care was off the table. The Democrats first tried to do something about this back in the Clinton administration, but were rebuffed by Republicans in Congress. One gridlock narrativeĬonsider the outlook for a left-leaning advocate of health care reform. The political system, as they see it, simply makes it too hard to get anything done. Yet politically engaged citizens - from both sides of the partisan fence - often bemoan gridlock in the American government. Two days after the midterm elections a one-page story in the Wall Street Journal announced that President Obama and Senator McConnell expected to be able to work together on at least one thing: the reauthorization of more military force in the Middle East. ![]() And perhaps those of us on the left, who would be expected to support the president and bemoan the Republican Senate, would prefer a little bit more gridlock.
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