Posted on 02/27/2017 7:27:20 AM PST by GIdget2004
Republican leaders are betting that the only way for Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act is to set a bill in motion and gamble that fellow GOP lawmakers won't dare to block it.
Party leaders are poised to act on the strategy as early as this week, after it has become obvious they can't craft a proposal that will carry an easy majority in either chamber. Lawmakers return to Washington Monday after a week of raucous town halls in their districts that amplified pressure on Republicans to forge ahead with their health-care plans.
Republican leaders pursuing the "now or never" approach see it as their best chance to break through irreconcilable demands by Republican centrists and conservatives over issues ranging from tax credits to the future of Medicaid.
The new strategy means the health-care law could be overhauled in three precarious steps--reflecting the difficulties of concurrently repealing and replacing the law, as President Donald Trump had sought.
Republicans can afford to lose no more than two GOP votes in the Senate and 22 in the House, assuming they get no support from Democrats. That means any GOP faction could torpedo the repeal effort by withholding its support--and members of each have threatened as much.
Advocates of the strategy hope that knife's-edge math will be an asset rather than a liability. They are betting different groups of Republican lawmakers can be pacified with a handful of concessions, then will swallow hard and vote for a longstanding repeal pledge, first in the House, then in the Senate.
"You're a Republican, you've been running to repeal Obamacare, they put a repeal bill in front of you... Are you going to be the Republican senator who prevents Obamacare repeal from being sent to a Republican president who is willing to sign it?"
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Don’t we already know who they are? That is, who have the safe enough seats to be the most brazen about it?
just repeal the POS already! Don’t need to ‘replace” it with anything. Just block grant Medicaid out to the States, enable competition across state lines and be done with it! The Market will fix itself.
Amen!
The idea of congress designing health insurance for us is ridiculous.
Like a second marriage, the triumph of hope over experience.
Shades of John Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it".
They are deplorable AND irredeemable.
President Bush broke his self-imposed silence in January 2011, in a speech at Southern Methodist University. The only problem was, he wasn’t attacking Obama, but conservatives. Addressing the immigration debate, he said: “(I)f you study history, there are some ‘isms’ that occasionally pop up … One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism.”These were potent insults directed at millions of hard-working patriots who helped elect him twice to the White House. Elites in both parties gleefully gobbled it up.
D’oh...wrong story.
And yet the voters saw through them enough to take the extraordinary step of electing Trump.
God bless him as he deals with this mess.
I will say it again, OBAMACARE WILL NEVER BE REPEALED in any way, shape or fashion.
There is ONLY ONE WAY to make it happen:
Executive Order
1. There shall be NO funds drawn from the treasury to pay for Health Insurance for ANY Federal Employee except Members of the Armed Services.
2. ALL Federal Employees except members of the US Armed Services, SHALL purchase their own personal and Family Health Insurance from the Affordable Care Exchange in the state they legally reside.
And to make sure it is Bipartisan, President Trump should VETO it every Time and FORCE them to Override his Veto to Repeal this Monstrosity.
Sign these 2 orders and it will be FULLY REPEALED in Less than 30 days.
NOT UNTIL, Anyone want to make a BET???
I would also consider another Executive Order Withholding All Transportation Funds from All States that do Not have Their Public Employees enrolled in Obamacare, just to Prove a Point.
I said they should have done this on day one, people argued with me, now this might fail.
If they had done this on day one, repeal it on day one, we would now be talking about market reforms to improve the system.
Trump could have gone down as the Big Hero if he would have the AG start using Sherman Anti-Trust and Wright-Patman to break up the medical monopolies and see real cost for health care drop, maybe as much as 80%.
No that is not going to happen and what we will get is a new screw up to replace Obamacare that will keep us on the road to absolute Fiscal Ruin.
My opinion all along is that we would see Rationed Health care with 75 Million Baby Boomers hitting the system. I still think the end game will be a single-payor system, but we may be bankrupt by that time.
If we don’t take the limited window we have now to reform the health care system and deal with the Debt, and Deficit our future as a country will be in jeopardy.
It is also possible the last move of the Fed might be inflation to deal with the debt and deficit, the question is will it get out of control like in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. It’s a high wire act they can’t pull off, then back to high interest rates to stop all the destruction.
How in the Hell does one invest for these disasters??????
Do you understand how the SS system really works? There is no account with your name on it and no monies that the government was going to invest in your behalf.
The system was predicated on having a a certain ratio of workers to retired people. Those currently working pay for those on Medicare and SS. The funds that could have helped were long ago plundered starting from the earliest days of SS in the late 1930’s.
There are some so called IOU’s held by the SS Department totaling some $2 Trillion but to get any money they have to have the Treasury Department redeem them and to do that they have have to sell more debt. There is no way out of this debacle.
One of the main reasons the GOP Leadership could be reluctant to get rid of Obama Care just yet is pure politics. Since the law was enacted, over 1,000 Democrats have lost their seats nationwide. All the review of election data shows that Obama Care is the central issue in taking down Democrats. It’s been the electoral gift that’s kept on giving. It seems logical the GOP Leadership wants to keep it a little longer because in 2018, 23 Senate Democrats are up for reelection, which is 50% of their Senate caucus. Ten of them are in states Trump won. They may want to keep it for just that much longer, create an actual 60-vote super majority in the Senate and then roll out whatever they want, with Democrats unable to stop anything. Much like when the Democrats had all of this in 2009. That could well be the reason they want it to hang around. It’s paid off handsomely for them, and they may want the last act climax to play out in 2018. Repealing it now only saves Democrats from having to defend their support for the disasters they unleashed when so many of them are sitting ducks two years from now.
I’d like to see some massive Trump waivers to break this logjam. Pattern them off the Obama waivers for unions and others with connections. Clearly reference the precedent being followed, and make the Trump waivers from Obamacare (1) universal, and (2) permanent.
Once every business and individual has a perpetual waiver, the gutless RINOs will no longer have an incentive to block repeal. They can do the right thing without risk - which RINOs will hate, but at least they will do the right thing.
It's quite simple, really. If Republican leadership can't find a way to keep their membership in line and get things passed, we might as well hand DC to the dems. The phonies know who got them elected. Time to put up or shut up when they go down in flames.
Hint...NH Conservatives, I'm sure, knew the risk it was to the majority to vote out backstabber Kelly Ayotte. She wasn't worth saving.
Exactly. Nobody is capable of anything according to politicians. The R’s got ELECTED to repeal it. Start there. The only thing worse than Obamacare is continuing it.
Collins is already a no. So they are only one away. Murky-cow-ski? McTurd? Linda Grahamnesty?
The more likely reason is the GOP knows they will own the replacement, and haven’t a clue as to what that will look like. They know that Trump has said it would be better, cheaper, offer more choices, will cover everyone, and will be the best healthcare plan in the world, so they need to get cracking.
“The more likely reason is the GOP knows they will own the replacement, and haven’t a clue as to what that will look like. They know that Trump has said it would be better, cheaper, offer more choices, will cover everyone, and will be the best healthcare plan in the world, so they need to get cracking.”
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Yep. That one looks plausible too. In any event, it only helps Democrats electorally if they get rid of it (meaning, they get rid of the disasters they can legitimately pin to the Democrats). If you’re right them no wonder they’re terrified. They can’t agree on much of anything. Let alone what the replacement ought to have.
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