"State opt-out for me, not for thee"?

What the hell kind of "compromise" is this?

Health care reform hasn't been abandoned - except by Congress, it seems.

There's a saying that, in a compromise between good and evil, only evil stands to benefit. I think this story illustrates this maxim spiffily.

As a handful of right-wing legislators in various states are threatening to pass bills to bar residents of their states from receiving benefits of a proposed national health care program, some in Congress think they can meet them halfway.

But let me tell you, we all know the corporatists don't settle for halfway. Whenever they get a foot in the door, it's all the way.

This "compromise" would let states opt out of national health care. At first, I wasn't concerned, because I figured that no state government would possibly be stupid enough to bar its citizens from benefiting from a popular public program.

Then I remembered a former Governor of Wisconsin named Tommy Thompson. Republican Thompson pulled his state out of AFDC, a federal assistance program for poor families. And the law didn't even authorize a state to unilaterally opt-out. Thompson had to get a federal waiver.

If a governor could pull his state out of a popular program like AFDC, what's to stop a state from doing the same with health care? Despite GOP losses, there's still no shortage of arrogant state leaders who don't care what the public thinks, because they know they'll stay in power through it all. (The names Rick Perry, Haley Barbour, and Bobby Jindal come to mind.)

You can also compare this to places that have tried to opt out of public education by turning their public schools over to private firms. If places get away with opting out of popular services like schools, why wouldn't they do the same to health care?

The Far Right keeps citing the Tenth Amendment to pull their states out of health care. But where were they when the draconian 1996 welfare "reform" law passed? The welfare "reform" law doesn't let the states opt out. This law prescribes in hairy detail who the states can give welfare to and how long poor families can collect. (Most state legislators were such wusses that they didn't dare to cite the Tenth Amendment then.)

The health care bill doesn't even tell the states what to do, yet still some state lawmakers think they can use the Tenth Amendment to opt out!

Did they even bother to read the Tenth Amendment? It was never intended for states to deny people federal benefits they deserve.