First, let me say that from a high-altitude perspective, the saga of Andy Harris is hilarious, and totally legitimate fodder for reporters, bloggers, political hacks, etc. Clearly, it’s galling when a guy runs a yearlong campaign against a law that makes sure every citizen has health insurance, and then starts kvetching about being without health insurance for a few weeks.
But for the most part, the hypocrisy ends there. Democratic activists used Harris’ gaffe to pressure Republicans into dropping their “government health care.” That’s their job, and they’ve had some success. But Harris wasn’t asking to be streamlined into an entitlement. He was complaining about the fact that his employer-provided health care benefits don’t kick in fast enough. That’s sort of gauche, and out of touch. But it’s not incompatible with the view that the mandate/subsidize/regulate system of national health care that President Obama enacted is bad policy.
Now, as it turns out, the system Harris wants to enter so quickly — the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan — works a lot like the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges, so Harris et al should tread carefully when they attack the law. And Harris reportedly did ask whether he could pay into some government-run insurance plan while he waited for his benefits kicked in. Most of us recognize that he should look into COBRA, but what he wants sounds suspiciously like a public option, which he and the rest of the GOP spent a year or so decrying as socialism.
The whole episode is a mess of boneheadedness, tone deafness, and bad politics, and there’s an obvious temptation to saddle the GOP with their Galt-like rebellion against providing people with health care. But that’s leading people to sweeping conclusions about the narrow issue of whether Republican government employees are hypocrites for accepting government-provided health insurance, when things are obviously more complicated than that.
