That has been my thinking on this too. We were never going to get an immediate, flat out repeal. Even if it could be done, America doesn’t want it. Conservatives may not want to hear it, but parts of Obamacare are popular. If Congress just repealed the pre-existing condition provisions, people would vote them out. If they flat out repealed everything, it would take a while for it to work through the market and people would be left with sky high premiums and no benefits. Its going to take a little time and several bills to unwind this monstrosity.
This also may be the entrée for entitlement reform. Gradually get rid of Medicaid and Medicare and replace it with something that lets people — including senior citizens — buy their own day-to-day medical coverage at unsubsidized market rates but protects them from catastrophic conditions. That would be a very good result from this whole mess.
For a long time I suspected much of America wouldn’t even be ready for a complete free market solution this quick. We have a patient that has to convalesce, not an aspirin to pop and all is well.
Thanks for your commentary, it makes sense and gives me hope. Obviously, we need to keep the GOP’s feet to the fire to ultimately see things through.
The left wins because they will settle for incremental gains on their journey. Our side insists on purity and uses purity as litmus tests. We’d rather lose 80/20 and say we stood for our principals.
They’re “progressive” because they’re always marching in the direction of their purity, and have done better than us in the last two generations. Perhaps we should take a page from their playbook.
One reason why it is difficult to perceive this bill as a “first step” is the recent history of the GOP. When Obama was in office, the GOP sent at least one “full repeal” bills to his desk for the obligatory veto while crowing about how that same course of action would be how they would do it once they also held the Presidency.
We now know that was a lie.
Similarly, Ryan pushed the idea that last fall’s continuing budget resolution was a stop-gap to bridge the election and installation of a new, much more conservative President. Now, we see the Dems laughing about how they rolled the GOP in the latest spending bill.
Simply put, the GOP has squandered any trust they may once have enjoyed because they promised the sky while digging a deeper hole to hide away from actually governing.
Politicians lie. All of them, IMO. But the GOP has taken to wholesale reneging on promises made in many people’s eyes. Instead of standing up and supporting the border wall/fence - which was a central promise of the Trump campaign - the GOP congress instead accepted and/or endorsed a spending bill with zero funds to start the process of building the wall that was authorized during the W administration (including supporting votes by Obama and Clinton).
To see this as a first step in a long journey, one must accept that the congressional GOP is planning to head in the same direction as we, the people, wish to go.
It doesn’t matter what us conservatives think or what society likes or wants. It is fully and totally unconstitutional for the government to be involved in ANY aspect of health insurance period end of story. Now we either fold the tents (which is what they want) or we keep fighting to return the government back to its original roots. They can repeal the whole thing but they don’t want to because the repuklican repulsive party IS THE PARTY OF BIG GOVERNMENT
That first step would eliminate nearly $800 billion in taxes!
I hope the next step gets rid of gov’t run healthcare altogether.
# 10,
You are right,Obamacare took few years to sink in. He gave subsidized to lot of organizations like union....besides rationing healthcare,no one will tell you the real costs on different situations. Why do we need to subside 26 years old adults. If he/she reaches legal age to drink,he/she should be treated as an responsible adult. Lot of couch potato & iresponsible (bad habit)individuals drain out the health care resourse,as well as illegal....