Posted on 03/07/2017 1:57:03 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Heritage Action and the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all thumbs down? Who said conservatives don’t stand up to Trump anymore?
Here’s the statement from Heritage, which Matt Welch describes as the “in-house think tank for the Trump administration.”
“In many ways, the House Republican proposal released last night not only accepts the flawed progressive premises of Obamacare but expands upon them. Ronald Reagan once said, ‘Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.’ The AHCA does all three.
“Many Americans seeking health insurance on the individual market will notice no significant difference between the Affordable Care Act (i.e., Obamacare) and the American Health Care Act. That is bad politics and, more importantly, bad policy.
“Rather than accept the flawed premises of Obamacare, congressional Republicans should fully repeal the failed law and begin a genuine effort to deliver on longstanding campaign promises that create a free market health care system that empowers patients and doctors.”
I don’t believe I’ve seen one major Republican player outside the congressional leadership say they support the House GOP bill this morning — with one very important exception, and even he’s sufficiently nervous to have framed the bill as a mere starting point for “negotiation”:
Our wonderful new Healthcare Bill is now out for review and negotiation. ObamaCare is a complete and total disaster – is imploding fast!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2017
The whole point of this rollout, though, is that there’s not going to be negotiation. McConnell made that plain this morning in saying that they’re going to vote ASAP. The bill wouldn’t survive a free-for-all in which the disparate centrist and conservative factions within the GOP are suddenly making demands for amendments. The only way this has a chance of getting passed is via a gut check, with McConnell and Ryan practically daring the critics in their caucuses to vote no and kill the GOP’s first, and maybe best, chance at repeal. That’s why the statements from Heritage et al. are so important: Activist groups are showing wary Republicans in Congress that they’ll have some grassroots support if they defy Trump and the congressional leadership by voting this thing down. It’s the first major rebellion on the right against the administration since Trump was sworn in. And it makes his reaction important. If conservatives end up muscling him into turning against the House plan, it’ll be taken as evidence that they can do it on other policies if they act in concert.
In fact, Trump’s already signaling that revisions, in the form of another “phase” of the process, might be in the offing:
Don't worry, getting rid of state lines, which will promote competition, will be in phase 2 & 3 of healthcare rollout. @foxandfriends
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2017
You can’t get to phase two unless phase one passes the House and Senate, and right now it sure looks as though the votes aren’t there. Rand Paul has already pronounced the bill “dead on arrival” and it’s hard to disagree given the volume of attacks. How do Trump and Ryan turn the momentum around amid an avalanche of criticism from both the left and right? At a minimum, Paul and Mike Lee sound like firm “no” votes in the Senate, leaving McConnell with no margin for error with the rest of the caucus. (Your move, Ted Cruz!) Health-care wonks like Peter Suderman have described the bill as a purported solution to ObamaCare that doesn’t solve anything but really just tinkers with the O-Care framework already in place to produce different winners and losers. Insurance expert Bob Laszewski, a longtime critic of ObamaCare, elaborates that the bill isn’t so much a policy solution as a political solution: Republicans know that there are no Democratic votes for it so they’ve thrown something together which they hoped might be able to draw enough votes from their own caucuses to get it through Congress. But it won’t work politically (the law overcompensates for how ObamaCare favored the poor at the expense of the middle class by favoring the better off) or as policy (the GOP’s “soft” mandate isn’t punitive enough to avoid adverse selection problems). And it doesn’t make enough Republicans happy to skate through the Senate given the GOP’s very narrow majority there. So what’s left?
I think it was conservative wonk Philip Klein who got to the heart of the problem for right-wing groups like Heritage. By merely fiddling with the controls of ObamaCare, writes Klein, the GOP has conceded that liberalism won the argument on health care:
Ultimately, it doesn’t do much to foster the development of a free market system. Under GOPcare, individuals would not be able to take insurance with them from job to job, because tax credits would not be available to people who have an offer of job-based insurance. They would not be able to purchase whatever plan they want, because the federal government will still be dictating what has to be in insurance policies, making insurance more expensive then it needs to be. If this bill passes, everybody would have to get their insurance either through government, their employer via tax subsidy, or be left to purchase government-designed health policies using federal subsidies…
It still rests on the premise that the federal government should play a significant role in subsidizing and regulating insurance markets in an attempt to ensure broad coverage. Thus, despite the political failures that resulted from Obamacare, the clunky legislation still moved the ball ideologically to the left. The argument isn’t over whether the government should require all insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. The argument is about whether the government should pay for it by forcing healthy people to purchase insurance under the threat of a penalty, as Obamacare does, or by threatening anybody who doesn’t maintain continuous coverage with a 30 percent late fee, as the GOP prefers. Liberals, in other words, have won the central philosophical argument, and Republicans are reduced to fighting over the mechanics.
Two great mysteries remain. One: How long will Trump continue to support the bill as the outcry grows on the right and left? The only hope it has of passing is if he goes all-in and demands that congressional Republicans pass it, but even that probably won’t work to scare Paul and Lee back into line in the Senate. (They were both reelected just a few months ago, remember.) All it’ll take is one more defector and Trump will have suffered a humiliating loss. That being so, how much does he really want to invest in selling this thing? And what happens if CBO comes out with a score showing that the bill would reduce coverage while increasing the deficit? That’s a steep political price for the White House to pay for backing a bill that probably can’t pass. Two: If the bill goes down, what replaces it? Conservatives want a clean repeal, but I think they’re kidding themselves. The public doesn’t like that idea; returning to the pre-ObamaCare status quo, even temporarily, may be a harder sell for the GOP than the new bill is. Another alternative is to back the Cassidy/Collins bill, which would let Democratic states keep ObamaCare if they like, but if you think Trump and Ryan are getting grief for their new plan today, imagine the grief they’d get from the right for a bill that explicitly preserves O-Care in some jurisdictions.
Update: Hoo boy. Now Tom Price is calling the bill a “work in progress”? Wasn’t supposed to be.
Tom Price calls health care bill a "work in progress" and "an important step" but won't say it's the "administration's bill"
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 7, 2017
Update: Here’s Rand Paul declaring the House bill DOA.
I am so sick and tired of these one-hundred percenters. The truth is they don’t want to change a damn thing because they have personally found ways around the problems. They are part of the elite, and they are a big part of our problem. These critics know damn good and well how the legislative process works. The bill will be amended numerous times, it will be marked up in committee, and finalized in a conference committee. All these Rino mouthpieces know this not the final product that was produced today. They simply want to scuttle the whole thing before it gets off the ground. It would not matter what the bill had in it today because these critics are more comfortable complaining than leading. I hope President Trump tells them all to go to hell, and finds a way to force through the best bill we can get.
Appears to me to be a piece of RINO trash that needs to go to the dumpster.
I had to go to the ER a few weeks ago, and I fully expect to get a bill for $1,100 to $1,300 for that.
What I didn’t expect was getting a separate bill from the Emergency Room doctor.
I’ve had to go to the ER 4 times in the past 7 years, and this is the first time I’ve gotten a separate bill from the ER doctor.
BTW, I have company provided insurance, but the deductible is high, so I get bills for this type of medical care.
Phase 1 - give me all of your money, your house, your 401k, and your cars.
I PROMISE in phase 2 and 3 I will give them back.
Except phase 1 takes 51 votes but phase 2 and 3 takes 60 votes.
Do you see what is wrong with this picture? Dont accept garbage for phase 1 on an empty promise of of phase 2. Phase 1 needs to be substantially right. The negotiating needs to be done now. What is the hurrybthat they have to pass a trainwreck now and later PROMISE to make it a roae garden. Negotiate and fix it now, before voting.
Why must the bill be passed to amend it? Amend it first, so the final product is known and voted on, not a work in progress. Rinocare is horrible.
I have a huge problem with the repeal conservatives. They want a 2 to 3 year delay before the repeal takes effect. I heard 2 years again on TV yesterday. This is a January article from hot air.
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/12/06/house-freedom-caucus-might-block-three-year-repeal-and-delay-plan-for-obamacare/
**[D]uring a retreat in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains over the weekend, Freedom Caucus members fumed at [the three-year] idea. Most said they wouldn’t settle for anything longer than a two-year replacement process, the time frame both chambers approved last year in an Affordable Care Act repeal bill that President Barack Obama vetoed.***
It is simple for me. Any repeal that is delayed or is only partially complete and kept on hold for 2 years means everything will be put at risk in another election in 2018. People could be so frustrated at continuing with ObamaCare or partial ObamaCare that we’ll lose house or senate. Then we’ll never get rid of it. I clearly understood on TV last night that they would pass the repeal legislation but that it would INCLUDE a 2 year delay. IOW, you have ObamaCare for 2 more years.
Trump and Price are saying do all we can now and then do more in 2 more phases.
Trump has been right all along great. I’m trusting him and not the 2 year repeal people.
“Protecting the insurance industry, as now entrenched, from interstate competition is a nonstarter for me.”
Why they can’t come up with some flowery legalese so it fits in budget bill?
I trust Trump. But these snakes with their 2 or 3 part “process” crap...it’s how Regan got swindled on immigration.
A partial fix means repeal will NEVER happen. How hard is that to understand? They are never going to modify Obamacare and then close the loop with, “the ACA is hereby fully repealed”. That will never happen, and God knows what the RINOs will leave in from the original abomination.
The only solution is to write a whole new health car bill in its entirety with a clause saying passage of this bill includes full repeal of ACA.
They ate being politicians, not problem solvers. They are pterrified to own it. They are big pussies, Paul Rino and the rest of the establishment pussies.
The bill will be amended before it is passed. Both the House and the Senate will have their version of the bill, which must then be formed into one single version, and then again approved by both houses. If Ryan and McConnel don’t interfere there should be plenty of opportunity to change this bill. In theory it could be completely different than the way it is now.
good points, thanks for responding!
Well...if they are against this abomination I say "welcome back!" This is a terrible piece of legislation and the only people who support it are inside the beltway...and who have a death wish.
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