Now that three of the nation’s largest health insurance companies have promised to preserve key parts of Obamacare regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, Republicans are using it as an opportunity to show why the U.S. does not need the Affordable Care Act:

“Today’s announcement is a reminder that sensible health care reform does not require the massive government takeover in Washington Democrats’ law, which is hurting our economy by driving up costs and making it harder for small businesses to hire,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner. Steel added that the private insurers’ action “reinforces our commitment” to repeal any portion of the law that the court leaves standing.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) offered a similar view. “There is plenty of room for solutions in the private market, and a primary objection to the ACA remains the heavy-handed, bureaucratic approach, which necessarily compels millions of employers and beneficiaries to leave private insurance in favor of a public option,’” she said in an email.

But it is short-sighted to promote a few companies continuing a few provisions, like allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26, as a replacement for the comprehensive health care reform law. For one, the insurers who will keep some parts of the health care reform law will likely not preserve guaranteed coverage for children with pre-existing conditions. And it is not clear that other companies will follow UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, and Humana and continue certain Obamacare regulations.

Most importantly, as the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn points out, these insurance companies also won’t be adding more Obamacare reforms that would have kicked in by 2014: federal subsidies to help people buy insurance, expanded Medicaid eligibility, minimum benefit standards, among other regulations. “They aren’t doing any of these things because, as a practical matter, they can’t. All of them require fundamental, structural changes to the insurance market, along with government subsidies,” Cohn writes. And only a law like the Affordable Care Act can do all of the above to help expand health care access and guarantee better coverage for millions of Americans.

Mitt Romney confirmed on Tuesday that he would allow insurers to deny coverage to millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions if the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare later this month. During a speech at Con-Air Industries in Orlando, Florida, the former Massachusetts governor said that Americans who have not been “continuously insured” would not be protected from discrimination if they suffer from pre-existing conditions:

ROMNEY: So let’s say someone has been continuously insured and they develop a serious condition. And let’s say they lose their jobs or they change jobs or they move and go to a different place, I don’t want them to be denied insurance because they have some pre-existing conditions. So we’re going to have to make sure that the law that we replace Obamacare with, ensures that people who have a pre-existing condition, who have been insured in the past, are able to get insurance in the future so they don’t have to worry about that condition keeping them from getting the kind of health care they deserve.

Watch it:

While the Affordable Care Act would prevent insurers from denying coverage to anyone with a pre-existing condition beginning in 2014, Romney’s provision is far more limited — and would only protect Americans who already have coverage.

As The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn has pointed out, the federal government already forbids insurers from denying coverage to the continuously covered through the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). But the measure has been seen as a failure because “there is no limit on what insurers can charge under HIPAA” and the law does “little to regulate the content of coverage, leaving the door open to insurers to offer bare-bones policies. In addition, HIPAA notice requirements are weak, making it hard for people to know about this protection.”

Romney could offer to bolster the existing law, but given his general laissez-faire approach to health care and opposition to “government interference” in the private sector, it’s unlikely that he would want to impose new regulations on insurers. Without a mandate for everyone to purchase coverage, the protection would also attract sicker people who need care and increase premiums for all enrollees. In other words, it’s a poor solution that will leave millions still searching for coverage.

Gil Kerlikowske, President Obama’s top adviser on drug policy and director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, gave a speech yesterday arguing for the treatment of drug addiction as a public health issue, not a crime. “Drug addiction is not a moral failing on the part of the individual, but a chronic disease of the brain that can be treated,” said the White House drug czar. Kerlikowske argued that the paradigmatic shift in policy focus is necessary because an emphasis primarily on incarceration and the criminal status of drug users fails to treat the problem by disregarding prevention, treatment, and recovery:

According to estimates from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 8 percent of Americans age 12 or older – about 21 million people – needed but did not receive substance abuse treatment at a specialty facility in 2010.

We are taking a close look at laws meant to deter drug use that unintentionally hurt people on the path to recovery. Research from the National Institute of Justice found 38,000 state and local statutes that impose additional penalties on people convicted of crimes-including drug-related crimes.

These laws burden people who have already served their sentences-in other words, they have already paid their price back to society. We must modify or repeal laws that keep a qualified person in recovery from getting the basics they need to rejoin society.

Kerlikowske’s speech reflects the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s strategy report, released in April, which “calls for more than 100 changes in US law and counter-drug programs.” The report estimates that in March, 23.5 million Americans were in treatment for alcohol or narcotics addiction.

In a similar vein, the American Psychiatric Association, which produces the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., announced last month that it would “expand the list of recognized symptoms for drug and alcohol addiction, while also reducing the list of symptoms required for a diagnosis.”

The Obama administration has been criticized in the past for its emphasis on enforcement and disapproval of decriminalization. John Turney of the New York Times noted that prior to a speech given by Kerlikowse in 2009, Vice President Joe Biden introduced him by saying, “Quite frankly, more cops on the street is one of the best ways to keep drugs off the street.”

–Nina Liss-Schultz