The only part of the law they even see.
At some point the supposed thought leaders of the conservative movement just stopped pretending they gave a flying damn about doing anything for any Americans who were not themselves or the people writing checks to them. The single-minded obsession conservatives and Republicans have for destroying any possibility of improving the American healthcare system is
something to behold.
"As we all get back to business today, we must remember the law itself is the problem — not the website. The website they can fix. We must deny them the opportunity to fix the law itself. Let the American people see big government in all its glory. Then offer a repeal."
All right, so it's CNN-hired piehole haver Eric Erickson, not an actual "thought leader of the conservative movement." You caught me. That said, if you can name any actual, credible "thought leader of the conservative movement" there might have to be a prize awarded; the pickings are slim on that front. No, not Grover Norquist, whose "thought" consists solely of demanding that nobody who pays him pay any taxes on anything, ever. No, not Paul Ryan, whose forays into the effort have never gotten any deeper than PowerPoint-level slideshows with a few numbers attached that even pundits propping him up as policy wonk admit seem to be pulled from a unicorn's backside. The think tanks? If there's one out there that has not seen its core beliefs do somersaults between the the start of the last presidency and the start of this one, let me know.
So we've got a partisan movement positively obsessed, and ideology be damned, with killing healthcare reform no matter how much healthcare may need reforming. Fuck the uninsured, there's elections to be won. To hell with the preexisting condition folks, which at this point is a good chunk of the nation—if America were to be seen as capable of handling its citizens' basic health needs like, say, every other damn industrialized nation on the planet, that would make people who don't like gubbermint sad, and all the Timmys and Janes and Grandma Jennys in the nation can go right to hell, if the choice is between them getting heart medication each month or Eric Erickson feeling fucking sad.
Again I point out: having private insurers do this damn thing is, and was, the conservative position. The law is complicated and difficult to implement because it was of ideological necessity to retain all possible private money-leeching in the current leech-riddled system. We have been having the same argument for twenty years; the ongoing insurance fiasco has never gotten any better, and every time it looks like it might someone with a very fat and secure paycheck pipes up to say that Grandma Jenny being able to afford her heart medication is an affront to all the Americans who don't want her to fucking have it.
We need a new conservative movement. I'm dead serious about this. The old one is broken. It's a partisan movement, not an ideological one, and there is no thought thinked-of or even tolerated that does not revolve around how to hurt the other party. The healthcare repeal is no longer paired with healthcare replace because no movement wag can dare suggest there might be a role for government in Grandma Jenny's basic needs at all; Now they're a movement dead set on preventing the citizens of their own nation from getting health insurance, and I do not know screwed in the head you need to be for that to seem like a good idea—certainly, though, screwed enough that you can't possibly expect us to take you seriously anymore. Not even a little bit.