Posted on 03/19/2017 5:26:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
There is an interesting phenomenon that happens among red state Democrats in the Senate every six years. They suddenly start sounding conservative when their re-election bid approaches.
They talk more conservatively. They act more conservatively. They vote more conservatively, at least until they get re-elected and can go back to holding the Democratic Party line in the Senate.
The same phenomenon happens in the Republican Party. Only last year, the American people called their bluff, put them in power, and now expect them to do what they promised. Republicans are terrified at the prospect.
Politicians are quite good at making promises and coming up with excuses as to why those promises went unfulfilled. “We control only one-half of one-third of the government,” we heard in 2011 as an excuse for why the promise of Obamacare repeal was “impossible.”
In 2015, Republicans were given the Senate, therefore control of one branch of government. The refrain changed to, “No matter what we pass, the president will veto it, and we don’t have the votes to override that veto.”
OK, fine. That’s all true. But the problem was they didn’t even try. Congress has power as a co-equal branch of government, yet no effort was exerted toward the promise on which they campaigned.
So now voters have given a second branch of government to the Republicans, and what do we have?
House Republicans have introduced the “American Health Care Act,” the legislative equivalent of Hangover 2. Hangover 2 was a slightly different version of The Hangover, but aside from the setting, you wouldn’t know the difference.
The biggest problem with the AHCA is it leaves in place the concept that it is the responsibility of the federal government to provide health insurance for Americans who don’t have employer-provided coverage. Aside from changing tax law to allow people in the individual market to buy insurance with pre-tax dollars and allowing for the purchase of insurance across state lines, the federal government has no business in the health insurance game.
A true conservative plan would allow the states to become 50 petri dishes able to experiment with ways to make insurance affordable. Eventually best practices would win out and be adopted by others. But that wouldn’t empower the feds, so we’re talking about subsidies, tax credits and a federal regulatory scheme only slightly less arduous than what currently exists.
There’s plenty of blame for this to go around, but the lion’s share has to rest firmly with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. He got the opportunity he and his colleagues have been asking for, and he gave us a bill that is only slightly better than the system it seeks to replace. No one hires someone who says, “Make me captain of the Titanic and I’ll make sure it sinks 20 minutes later.” Yet that’s what the Republican plan does.
Seven years they had to come up with an idea, and we get a tweak. For seven years, we were told they knew the way, and we get this.
It’s not as though Republicans are burning up the rest of the agenda, they’ve done next to nothing since Jan. 20. After years of “hurry up,” all we’ve gotten is “wait.”
I get that Republicans are afraid of health policy. As a health policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation a decade ago, I briefed many of them on the issue and saw the terror in their eyes as they waited for just enough information to be able to answer basic questions on an issue they’ve ceded to Democrats for years. But for the last seven years, they’ve sworn they had the answers. So where are the answers? The AHCA is not it.
You don’t have to understand the complexities of health insurance markets and impact of regulations on them to understand the Constitution and the limits it places on the federal government. That shouldn’t be a bridge too far considering they swear an oath to it at the start of every term. One would hope they would’ve read it, if not understood it, before they pledged to defend it.
And you don’t have to be a legislative historian to recognize the idea Republicans have proposed of a “three-pronged approach” is insane when even they acknowledge the second “prong” is regulatory and easily could be reversed by a Democratic administration and the third will be blocked even more easily by a filibuster in the Senate. Republicans swear they need a trident to kill Obamacare when a spear would do. Like a Band-Aid – just rip it out of existence, Senate parliamentarian be damned.
Nearly every member of the Republican caucus campaigned on repealing Obamacare and told voters they were “constitutional conservatives.” Nothing they’ve done since would lead anyone to believe either claim was true.
If there’s positive about the process around the AHCA, it’s that so far it is moving slowly. Unlike Obamacare’s passage, Republicans have been transparent. Unfortunately what they’ve cooked up so far is transparently awful. It’s time to scrap the patch and unleash the free market.
Unless the AHCA is fundamentally transformed to the point states are free to experiment, the market is free to function, and individuals are free to make their own choices, everything we have been told will have been a lie, the whole thing should be scrapped and Obamacare allowed to collapse. Both parties will be blamed, and both parties will be to blame.
A golden opportunity in the cause of liberty will have been squandered because, after seven years of talk, Republicans could not do the one thing they told us they would; the reason they were in the position to disappoint us in the first place. It’s time to start over and do it right – if Speaker Ryan and the rest of Republican leadership actually have it in them to do what they’ve campaigned on.
I blame mac/ryan.
The point? Hillaryous Rotten Criminal IS NOT in office (although she should be in prison along with current and former gang members of the Gang of 535, aka CONgre$$).
LOCK HER UP!
LOCK THEM UP!
I blame the idiots in Wisconsin who elected this scumbag globalist..along with the dumbasses in SC who voted to reelect pos Lindsey Graham..and the dumbasses in Kentucky who re elected McConnell..and Arizona with McCain..these are the people who are trying to destroy Trump with the democrats
THese scum are the worst of the worst
For winning the election?
I am of the belief the “Trump Election” will be remembered for how it temporarily stopped the massive bleeding out of America for 4 and hopefully 8 years.
However, the “self-inflicted” mortal wounds inflicted for the last 30 years will finish her off after he leaves.
the fact this question is asked shows that some on the right need to find a new interest.
No, for killing repeal of Obamacare, which was one of the biggest stated goals of the GOP platform. Now Ryan is starting this cute BS of his.
Stop beating up Wisconsin. Ryan’s district is one of eight, most of the state didn’t elect him.
Paul Ryan is just one Rep of 435. It was the Republican House that gave this Quisling the Speakership. The blame lies with them.
Just like the 12 years of Reagan(then Bush) did some forty years ago.
The people that keep voting for him are the people that need to be screamed at.
Bunch of rubes more turned on by this guy being Speaker, as if they all get a residual check for it.
I hate insurance. I don't want to buy any insurance of any kind. God is my Providence.
Reagan was great, his successor, Bush Sr.,was the beginning of the last thirty years of destruction.
Not Losing the election
Gerrymandering, perhaps?
That's a little bit true, but it misses the point.
Congress tries hard to give people what they want. The problem with healthcare is that people want a number of things, some of which are mutually exclusive, and the intensity with which they want each one varies based on their particular circumstances at any given time.
Based on 45 years of observing patients and their families, I would say the top three "wants" are 1) Immediate access to all the care needed for a particular event, 24x7x365 and regardless of geography or season. 2) No payment at the point of service and no charges they can't afford, and 3) No one denied "emergency" care who can't or won't pay for it, or at least, if it happens, it happens in a way that they don't have to read about it or hear about it.
The "system", since 1965, has been pretty good at delivering #1, or something close to it.
The problem is that the machine that delivers #1 has been paid for with debt and money printing. This has created a crisis that the politicians KNOW they have to deal with, but without seeming to take away #1.
Number two is why "insurance" still exists, even though medical needs are not rare like car crashes or house fires. Oh, and it still exists also because it provides rivers of cash to Members of Congress. You can, for a time and by granting tax deductions to large employers create the appearance of no payment at the time of service and no unaffordable charges, but what is really going on is overpayment for some things, underpayment for others, and no payment for illegal aliens and others without insurance. Obamacare and Romneycare are the eventual result.
It's number three, though, that makes a single payer system an (eventual) certainty. Congress passed, and Reagan signed, a bill in 1986 that required hospitals (I'm not sure about other providers) to give any and all emergency care, and care to women in labor, without regard to payment, and in answer to "how can we pay for this", Congress said, "Who knows? You figure it out". The way this has been "figured out" has made every bill, every charge, every Medicare cost report, and every internal budgeting process since then an exercise in subjectivity (to put it kindly).
Yes, "the People" hate Obamacare and want it repealed, that is absolutely correct.
They also want insurance for pre-existing conditions, coverage for their adult children, coverage (of some sort) available to everyone, free care for emergencies and childbirth, and other things.
The fact is, the only thing the people hate about Obamacare is the name, and paying for it.
Getting rid of the rest will end the careers of Members who vote for it, and usher in a 1974-style left wing Congress that will nationalize the whole thing.
This is why I expect Trump to support a single payer scheme with a robust private option within a few months - he really has no other choice.
Nothing new. The spineless GOP-e always talks a better game out of power than they deliver in power. Trump will drag them kicking and screaming to his agenda. The nice thing about the spineless GOP-e is that Trump can bully them into submission just as easily as the Democrats and media can.
To make the Left miserable while we enjoy life.
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