Republicans may not be prepared for the Obamacare war

[DonViejo]

By Jennifer Rubin December 27 at 10:30 AM

Republican Senate and House leaders who have summarily decided on a “repeal and dawdle” plan for Obamacare don’t seem to understand what they are up against. They see House and Senate majorities, an incoming president who vowed to repeal all of Obamacare and a reconciliation process that allows them to gut Obamacare taxes and subsidies, essentially killing the program with 51 votes in the Senate. Do they understand it won’t be that easy?

The first problem is Republicans in the House and Senate. Several Republicans have already voiced doubts about repealing Obamacare with no ready replacement. Every freshman congressman from an unsafe district should be voicing his or her concern. Repeal Obamacare and then go back to the voters in 2018 with nothing?! Yeah, it’s risky for those new lawmakers who promised something better than Obamacare, not making health-care coverage disappear.

Next are the voters, including the Rust Belt working-class whites, a group that surely benefited from the marketplace subsidies, as reports like this one from the Atlantic magazine point out:

Among those whose incomes are less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level—just around $49,000 for a family of four this year—whites actually gained insurance at relatively high rates. Data from the 2016 and 2014 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement shows that the proportion of uninsured low-income white people dropped by 8.6 percentage points from 2013 to 2015, a reduction that was roughly similar to the decrease among Hispanic people, but which outpaced the national average of 8.1 percentage points, and dwarfed the decrease among black people in the same income groups. Members of the white working class, in other words, were particularly likely to gain coverage from Obamacare.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/12/27/are-republicans-prepared-for-the-obamacare-war/?utm_term=.04368dd1e103

[LonePirate]

1. The Republican led House has failed to pass a replace bill for the past six years.

That should tell you how serious they are about actually replacing it.

[Blue Shoes]

3. Obama always had veto power

Now the patients run the clinic, they'll do what they please

[LonePirate]

5. True. But they put on a show of their 50+ repeal votes. They never mention the 0 replace votes.

[vlyons]

2. The good news is that Republicans are bullies and cowards

Oh, they may huff and puff about how Obamacare is anti-freedom and too expensive. But what they fail to say is that insurance rates went up because insurance companies raised them. Why? Long answer - because some insurance companies pulled out, meaning that insurees had to make up the difference. Short answer - because they could.

The Republicans will now tell us that allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines will bring in competition and lower costs. But what would really happen is that insurance companies will flock to the states with the weakest consumer protections and regulation. Rates won't go down, but profits will go up. Pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps might return also. And of course, women will pay more than men.

I can't help but think that if millions of Americans risk getting their health insurance ripped away, there will be an outrage and stink raised so high that cowardly Republicans will balk at going there.

[Docreed2003]

7. Republicans are responsible for the rate hikes...

Rubio's poison pill in the omnibus budget bill of fall 2015 essentially undermined the "risk corridors" that protected insurance companies who were taking the financial risk of taking on patients with significant preexiting conditions. By killing that financial firewall, Rubio knew full well that rates would go up and he knew exactly when it would be reported...Fall 2016, just in time for the Presidential election, he just had no idea that he wouldn't be on the GOP ticket, but that was his motivation

[forgotmylogin]

4. They've had so much time to offer an alternative.

They're either really bad at their job, or they honestly prefer to just yank it out and leave things the way they were before.

[onethatcares]

8. we saw the repiglican version when

boehner walked into the house with a book with empty pages.

[Bettie]

6. Is there still such a thing as an "unsafe district" for Republicans anymore?

I'm serious. Aside from a small handful of one-offs, I suspect they are all gerrymandered into office permanently, unless a more wigged out teabagger (trumpbagger?) wants their seat.

[Skittles]

9. of COURSE they are not prepared

they want to destroy everything Obama accomplished; they don't give a FUCK about HELPING people