Obamacare Repeal Might Have Just Died Tonight

[flamingdem]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/obamacare-repeal-might-have-just-died-tonight.html

January 9, 2017 9:17 p.m.

The Republican plan to repeal Obamacare and delay the implementation of the repeal – with a promise to come up with a terrific replacement later – is probably its best way to destroy Obamacare. Unfortunately for Republicans, it’s also the best way to destroy the Republican majority in Congress.

Something big is happening in the Senate right now: The Republican plan, affirmed again today by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is facing dire peril from Republican defections. Republicans need a House majority, 50 Senate votes, and soon-to-be President Trump to pass repeal and delay.

If Republicans lose three Senate votes, that drops them to 49, and repeal-and-delay cannot pass. At least three Republican senators (in addition to all the Democrats) now oppose repeal and delay. Rand Paul, of all people, has demanded that Congress repeal Obamacare at the same time it passes a plan to replace it. Paul has announced that he spoke with Trump and secured his agreement on this. Trump has not said so himself, confining his comments to date to a vague assurance “That’s all gonna work out.”

In other words, the dissenters pretend they just want to give the GOP a little more time to design its plan. But more time isn’t going to help. There’s never going to be a Republican plan. Republican leaders like McConnell promise the replacement will come soon thereafter, but people in the insurance and medical industry aren’t idiots. They know later means never.

Trump, of course, tends to change his mind frequently and agree with whomever he spoke with last. But other Republicans senators are taking the initiative. Fellow Republican Lamar Alexander says the same thing as Paul: “We have to take each part of it and consider what it would take to create a new and better alternative and then begin to create that alternative and once it’s available to the American people, then we can finally repeal Obamacare.” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said on MSNBC, “It would not be the right path for us to repeal Obamacare without laying out a path forward.” And Senator Bob Corker is walking right up to the edge of the same position, asking Trump to tweet out confirmation of what Paul claims he promised. “If it is his view, it would be really good if he would consider tweeting it out very clearly. There’s more and more concerns about not doing it simultaneously,” Corker says.

Even more ominously for the Republican leadership, four other Republicans have joined Corker to sponsor a bill delaying the bill that would repeal Obamacare for a month:

Portman, Collins, Cassidy and Murkowski have not joined the other three in formally opposing any bill that repeals Obamacare without a replacement. But their willingness to buck their party leadership and try to delay a vote that McConnell hopes to rush through as quickly as possible indicates severe reservations about repeal and delay. Meanwhile, numerous Republican governors – who don’t have a vote on it, but can nonetheless exert pressure – are lobbying Washington Republicans to protect the parts of the law that their states rely on.

The stated goal of the dissenters is mild: they merely want to take a little more time to clarify what comes next. “You would think after six years we would have a pretty good sense of what we would like to do,” explains Corker. Of course, they don’t have a good sense of what to do. They have some vague concepts without agreement. And any Republican plan, when fleshed out, turns out to be extremely risky. Conservatives hate Obamacare because it redistributes too much money from the rich and healthy to the poor and sick. But they don’t publicly attack the law on that basis. Instead they attack it for high premiums, high deductibles, and narrow choice of doctors and hospitals – all flaws that any Republican plan would have in much higher doses. Republicans have yet to unify around a single, concrete, scorable plan because it is conceptually impossible to design a health care plan that meets conservative ideological goals and is also acceptable to the broader public.

[BeyondGeography]

1. IOW, conservatives do shit for average people

And they're afraid to do anything that would make that point clear.

[flamingdem]

2. I'm not sure they realized that people will know when they lose their healthcare!

They can't just shred so gleefully.

Ryan should know better and at least be sneaky.

[roamer65]

3. They are scared of healthcare industry money in the 2018 campaign.

They were warned not to fuck with the ACA by industry groups and the AMA.

[CentralMass]

4. Bingo.

[flamingdem]

5. This article is less optimistic, says the health industry is not really stepping up

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/us/politics/affordable-care-act-health-care-lobby.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1

[CousinIT]

6. ACA repeal: Like 'shoving sm1 off a cliff, saying 'We'll figure it out before you get to the bottom'

-Cory Booker - https://twitter.com/LawyerRogelio/status/818278623073464320

[Cha]

11. Good one

[napi21]

7. I've heard several times today that there are a number of Pubbies who won't vote

to repeal until twhey have a good replacement. They said THEIR voters would hold it against them at election time. I don't know how many of them there are, but I got the impression there are more than 3-4. I'll be laughing my ass off if McTurtle fails to be able to repeal the ACA after years of threatening.

[C Moon]

8. It's nice to see something that has unified the Democrats, too.

[jknudsen]

9. We can only wish

[Cha]

10. "trump has not said so himself" too busy defending his vicious behavior

with more lies.

Let's hope saner heads prevail. because I would if they repeal Ocare like most are just itching to do then there will be more than a few upset gops.

Mahalo

[calimary]

12. Anything that enables the destruction of the CON majority would be WAY OKAY with me!

Be careful what you wish for, CONS.