Obama Offers Olive Branch to GOP Governors on Reform Provision

The Tea Partiers and GOP continue to refer to the ACA as Obamacare. (Today, in a speech to a bipartisan cadre of governors in DC for their winter meeting — Obama said that he would support legislation that would allow individual states to opt out of mandated coverage sooner if they could demonstrate coverage roughly equivalent to parameters under the original reform law for the same costs.) Now that the president has apparently acquiesced on federalizing this law, will the GOP lighten up on the ubiquitous appellation?

The announcement is the first time Mr. Obama has called for changing a central component of his signature health care law, although he has backed removing a specific tax provision that both parties regard as onerous on business.

It’s a little difficult to see the wisdom for Obama with this move, as it only seems to set the foundation of anti-reform rhetoric by which his ideological foes will continue spar with him in 2012.