Cruz Goes From 'Lucifer' to Dealmaker in Health-Care Overhaul

[DonViejo]

by Steven T. Dennis
June 12, 2017, 4:00 AM EDT

Ted Cruz is trying a radically new role: dealmaker.

The first-term senator from Texas is seeking to unite warring wings of the Republican Party around an effort to kill Obamacare and is showing a new willingness to compromise with colleagues to devise a replacement plan.

It’s a significant departure for the formerly obstructionist Cruz, who lost the Republican presidential contest to Donald Trump and has long had icy relations with other lawmakers. Cruz once called Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar on the Senate floor, and former Republican House Speaker John Boehner once called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” and the most “miserable son of a bitch” he had ever worked with. His most notable legislative accomplishment so far has been to help force a shutdown of the government for 16 days in 2013 in an unsuccessful effort to strip funding from Obamacare.

Cruz, 46, said Trump’s election and Republican control of the government prompted him to change his approach. These days, he’s negotiating regularly with McConnell and other senators. "The entire world changed on election day," Cruz said in one of several recent interviews. "My focus today is on delivering results and not wasting this historic opportunity."

Cruz’s engagement underscores how difficult it has been for Republicans to follow through on one of the party’s top priorities. While the majority of GOP lawmakers have long championed getting rid of Obamacare, there are deep divisions among Republicans about what should replace it. While the House narrowly passed a health-care plan, Senate Republicans have been mired in discussions about how to craft legislation that could attract enough votes to pass.

more
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-12/cruz-goes-from-lucifer-to-dealmaker-in-health-care-overhaul

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. What are they fighting about in the first place?

I thought all republicans agreed that killing poor people is fun?

[haele]

2. They're fighting over who gets credit for the final game plan.

Lobbyist money, corporate sponsorship, etc. Who gets the best seat in the exclusive restaurant club lounge to hold court from. That sort of thing.

Haele

[Eliot Rosewater]

3. I want a reality TV show "Trump voter finds out GOP took his healthcare"

I wish we could get camera crews to follow around a few dozen of the MILLIONS of his supporters he is trying so hard to kill, to see their reaction.

[haele]

4. That's why so many GOP politicians are avoiding meeting their constituants in open forums.

Once they force through their abortion of a "Health Careless" bill so the Tea Party will sign off on it, and the Drumpf signs it into law - their "Town Halls" will become reality TV shows as the rubes find out that they and their relatives will have to pay "market prices" for medicine and procedures they need to survive. Especially after the Insurance companies kettle all those pesky low-middle income high risk patients into "Vampire Insurance Pools" that will suck them and their families financially dry before they get thrown out to live or die in poverty and unrelenting pain.

Because Corporate Hospitals aren't going to do anything for the poor or financially strapped, even if they claim to be religiously based and supposedly non-profit.
And medical professionals still have to pay their bills and raise their families, so trading complete health care (expensive diagnostics, medicines, therapies) for chickens or services is no longer going to be possible for anything beyond simple triage and maintenance health procedures that can be done in a clinic setting.

Haele