Posted on 11/15/2013 1:40:23 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
House Democratic leaders, in a bid to keep frustrated rank-and-file members from supporting a Republican bill to remedy the White House’s broken “if you like it, you can keep it” promise, are mobilizing around a new legislative fix.
As Democrats huddled in a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday afternoon with Obama administrative officials, leaders decided they would go to the House floor on Friday with a new plan to counter the bill sponsored by Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., a House Democratic leadership aide confirmed to CQ Roll Call.
Upton’s bill would allow insurers to revive existing health plans canceled because they don’t comport with the health care law’s new standards. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that the Democrats’ plan, to be offered via a motion to recommit, would “complement” the administrative fix President Barack Obama announced earlier on Thursday. That fix allows insurers to extend canceled health plans by a year, but not allow them to sell policies to new customers as the Upton bill would.
The plan also would include language promoted by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., that would give some additional power to state insurance commissioners, said the aide. A source added that leadership is also considering adding a number of other members’ ideas into a “package.”
The top four House Democrats — Pelosi, Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, Assistant Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina and Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra of California — appeared before the microphones at the conclusion of the caucus meeting.
They deflected on the question of whether House Democrats felt compelled to apologize for the website glitches and the unfulfilled pledge to let Americans keep their insurance policies. They suggested Obama’s “if you like it” statement wasn’t inaccurate even though Obama acknowledged Thursday that it was.
Hoyer said that while, as he had said before, the president lacked “precision” in his explanation of the conditions under which individuals could and could not keep their health care plans, Obama never made an inaccurate statement.
“The president was very gracious in taking responsibility and making an apology, but I agree with Mr. Hoyer,” said Pelosi. “What the president said, in regard to the Affordable Care Act, is absolutely so.
“Did I ever tell my constituents that if they liked their plan, they could keep it?” Pelosi continued. “I would have, if I ever met anybody who liked his or her plan, but that was not my experience.”
Clyburn added, “I have not apologized because I think that all of us, when we were advocating for this legislation, we said time and time again, that we wanted to get rid of discrimination against people with preexisting conditions, we wanted to get rid of people having policies canceled as soon as they got sick, we wanted to get rid of these annual limits, these lifetime limits. …I don’t think there’s anything for us to apologize for.”
Democratic leaders, fearful of the political embarrassment of defections from the rank-and-file, also wouldn’t comment on whether they were launching a formal whip operation to urge “no” votes on the Upton bill. If there isn’t such an operation, it could be out of the sensitivity of the issue: vulnerable Democrats might feel they need to vote “yes” on the legislation in order to protect their seats in 2014.
Speaking with reporters in a small scrum following the press conference, Becerra said that leadership was engaging in extensive communication, with the most recent caucus meeting the 24th occasion on which members have been briefed on Upton’s bill, be it in meetings, small sit-downs or conference calls.
Asked by one reporter whether it was true that leaders feared 100 Democratic defections, Becerra shook his head and said he didn’t think it would approach anything like that.
Other Democrats leaving the meeting midway through demurred when asked whether the Obama-Schakowsky language was a done deal.
Reps. Jim Costa of California and Michael E. Capuano of Massachusetts both said it was just one of many ideas being discussed.
Others backed the idea of including Obama administrative language as vastly preferable to the Upton bill.
“I mean, it’s a positive plan that makes the president’s words real and allows those people that had their policies cancelled to hopefully have an opportunity to get the insurance they liked and maintain coverage,” said Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee.
“I think the one-year fix is sufficient. I think when people find out that their policies weren’t very good and that they had so many, such deficient coverage, that I think they’re going to want to get a better policy,” he said. Cohen said the president’s pledge was never really enforceable to begin with.
“While the president said ‘if you like your health care now, you keep it,’ well he couldn’t really make the insurance companies continue to offer it,” Cohen said.
Cohen predicted that 20 to 25 Democrats “at the most, at the most” would vote for the Upton bill.
Early Thursday morning, Pelosi was prepared to put her weight behind a proposal spearheaded by fellow California Democrat George Miller, sources said. A close Pelosi ally and ranking member on the Education and the Workforce Committee, Miller proposed a plan that would have allowed people to stay on their old plans until the end of the enrollment period in March.
But Obama’s announcement a few hours later changed the state of play, said sources.
At this point, people everywhere - and I mean everywhere - have seen the true intent and stupidity of Democrats, liberal agenda, and socialist policies - THEY DON”T WORK...as we end 2013 and begin to “listen” to those poised to run for election in 2014 - a host of brand new people that will HALT Obamacare, INVESTIGATE the president for his traitorous acts that has lead to the deaths of US Citizens, and IMPEACH this moron within months - not a year - but months after taking office — this crap has got to be stopped in 2014 — Hillary and the rest of that train wreck cannot not be allowed to continue untouched b what they did - and see her on some Demo-ticket for 2016...
If this is not done in 2014 - then it’s over - too many idiots have populated the US and it’s time to move or “bunker in” and wait for the waking dead to hit the streets and eat each other - then - maybe - the US might be able to rebuild on the core values that made it strong in the first place...truthfully, I don’t see it happening...I chose reality - not hope!
Following yesterday’s fun and games I ran out of popcorn...
“Fixing” Obamacare is impossible. This is a political stall - a shell game.
Americans and their healthcare are mere pawns in Obama’s “fundamentally changing America” agenda.
It’s a wild, runaway trip in their determined pursuit to kill capitalism.
The idea that the Democrats can save this - stop it from breaking apart, has the same odds Shuttle Columbia had when it broke apart over Texas.
And lives will be lost with Obamacare too.
It is a disaster for the country.
Repeal it now!
Washington Times:
“Obama said Thursday that what’s good for illegal immigrants is also good for people who are losing their health insurance because of Obamacare, saying he’ll use prosecutorial discretion to let companies continue to offer health plans that violate his law.......”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3091470/posts
It all depends on what the meaning of "is" is.
“The issue is never about the issue.” - David Horowitz
Like I’ve been saying, the insurance companies and states will NOT reverse the cancellations and law!
Heard this echoed for the first time tonight on Hannity.
The asshat killed my insurance!!!
LOL!
I agree - but with the holidays coming up - the serious of Congress is gone out the door...I don’t see any “real” actions taken against this president...sure his polls are down - but he never cared away ....he just makes speech after speech...gone are the days of accountability...I’ve seen it recently during an elementary day when I volunteer to go in and demonstrate the folding of the US flag in full dress blues and see the kids walking up and down the halls talking back - being rude - etc...shocking...and this new generation thinks everything should be handed to them...even when the reality sinks in...a text comes in and their attention to the problem is redirected...it’s sad...
Yes - you and I know what needs to be done - like this should have NEVER been enacted into law in the first place - but then again Obama had no legal right to be in the election ticket either due to the fraud committed in Indiana - but, yet there he sits....
That’s right. Rescind and repeal immediately.
Upton has started the RINO game of negotiation and appeasement, and he got the predictable result.
Dems can always do better (politically) at the tinkering. They will both tinker until the media decides the people should be happy enough, and quits reporting on the resulting chaos and unintended consequences against the non-ruling class.
Wow.. the shxt that comes out of Pelosi’s mouth is unreal. Hoyer, the beloved saint of Maryland is just as bad. Pure SCUM all of them.
Upton’s “fix” helps keep 0bama’s promise for one year. Big whoop. Then it’s right back to “you lose your insurance” and “you lose your doctor” promise over. It’s stupid.
The immediate purpose of the step the administration announced was, ironically, pretty much the same one that moved the president to falsely claim for three years that anyone who liked his insurance plan would be able to keep it: to calm down congressional Democrats and keep them unified. The president moved to permit insurers to renew plans that do not comply with Obamacare’s requirements because it looked like legislative proposals to do that were going to win the votes of large numbers of Democrats in both houses, and so effectively fracture the gritted-teeth Democratic unity that has been the only thing sustaining the cause of Obamacare in our politics since before the law was enacted.
If many dozens of House Democrats broke with the leadership and the president to vote for the Upton bill (which would allow insurers to keep selling any 2013 plans they wanted to all comers next year), they might well never come back to the Obamacare fold, and the inevitable fights to come would be all the more painful for the president. If the Senate Democrats championing the Landrieu bill (which would impose a guaranteed-renewability requirement on all 2013 plans, overriding Obamacare’s qualified-coverage mandates) got their way, they would expose deep divisions in the Democratic caucus that Harry Reid has worked for years to hide (mostly by avoiding difficult votes) and put the president in the position of seeming to be reprimanded by his own party. If both bills passed, the result of a conference committee between them could well be unbearable for the president in both political and policy terms. Obama evidently decided he should do whatever it took to avoid those immediate undesirable consequences, regardless of the longer-term cost. This was the same sort of thinking that led him to repeatedly promise people they could keep any plan they liked in order to keep the extremely precarious Obamacare coalition of Democrats together in 2010 and after. The idea is to get past the immediate political problem and worry about the bigger problems you create later. ..................."
Hoyer said that the president lacked precision but never made an inaccurate statement.
That’s the same thing as saying, “This man has a throat issue,” w/o saying “he’s choking to death.”
It’s unfixable.
*****************************
Obamacare is absolutely not fixable. Instead of trying to save it, some responsible conservative member in the US House of Representatives should QUICKLY put together a healthcare bill (call it something such as “The Freedom of Healthcare Choice Act” that accurately describes it) that can be brought to a vote. The bill would, overriding any and all conflicting laws such as “The Affordable Care Act”, simply reinstate the freedom of individuals and businesses working in conjunction with private insurance companies to have THEIR health insurance with coverage THEY choose.
Let Democrats go on record voting against the freedom of healthcare choice. They’ve already voted to empower the STATE (instead of FREE private parties) to be the decision maker on what insurance can cover and what it cannot. Don’t help the Democrats out—let them suffer the electoral bloodbath they so richly deserve in 2014.
Obama’s speech in Ohio Thursday after his dictatorial press conference:
“.......“I’m going to see this through,” Obama said of the healthcare law.
“We are not going to gut this law; we will fix what needs to be fixed,” he added.
......The insurance industry largely ripped the proposal, saying it would undo much of the work they have done to prepare to implement the sweeping law.
Democratic lawmakers are still pursuing legislative changes, saying the administration’s fix doesn’t go far enough to help the millions of Americans receiving cancellation notices.
Obama at the Ohio event was noticeably less apologetic than during a White House press conference Thursday morning, in which he conceded the administration had “fumbled” the Obamacare rollout.
“We always knew this was going to be hard,” the president told the Cleveland crowd. “There’s a reason the folks who tried to do this for 100 years hadn’t done it.”
The president also took a swipe at the same insurance companies he is now asking to renew cancelled coverage plans.
Under Obamacare, the president said insurance companies would no longer “jack up your premium so you can’t afford it” just “because you had some sort of preexisting condition.”
The president travels to Philadelphia later Thursday for a Democratic fundraiser.”
Democrats—if you lie your bill you can keep it-—in the garbage pail. PERIOD.
The GOP must let this wholly Democrat designed (and passed into law) disaster unfold into the horror it always was going to be - that the GOP [Cruz and Co] has been warning it would be; the Democrats own it, lock, stock and barrel. If the GOP tries to "fix" it, they will be granting that the Democrats had "good intentions."
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