Posted on 03/25/2017 5:33:48 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
AHCA was pulled from the floor yet again this afternoon, and it now is probable that Obamacare will be the law of the land for years to come. This is an utter disaster for U.S. health care, not to mention individual liberty, and the responsibility rests squarely on shoulders of a small cadre of political opportunists with the effrontery to call themselves the “House Freedom Caucus.”
These people held out for the impossible — full repeal of Obamacare in one fell swoop — and have thus destroyed the only realistic opportunity their party will have in the near future to eradicate the law’s individual and employer mandates, enact entitlement reform, expand HSAs, defund Planned Parenthood, halt the metastasis of Medicaid, and cut its myriad taxes.
Moreover, they have made a mockery of their group’s name by perpetuating the increasingly oppressive and powerful administrative state, leaving their constituents to the tender mercies of Beltway bureaucrats whose contempt for the taxpayers who support them is exceeded only by the breathtaking incompetence with which they mismanage everything they touch.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Largely.
The reason Boehner was able to move legislation was the hatred of Trump didn’t exist on the left. He wasn’t on the radar screen. The number of Dem votes for some legislation was greater than 0. Boehner could get things like the debt ceiling through, and continuing resolutions through because there would be Dem votes.
With total control and a requirement to govern, the GOP caucus hasn’t yet figured out there will be 0 Dem votes for ANYTHING. Their hatred is extreme. The GOP caucus is going to have to pass everything alone.
Including the upcoming debt ceiling raise and CR, which btw, will include full funding for Obamacare. Watch. The Freedom Caucus will vote for the budget CR, despite it funding Obamacare.
Those bills sent 60 times were not filibustered. They would be now. This has already been addressed and dismissed.
Further, it’s now closer to 2018 and we have two GOP senators who probably will lose their seats. They could get away with voting for a bill that would never become law. They could not now. Your REPEAL ONLY bill would not get even 40 votes now, and it would need 60.
Either you haven’t been reading these threads where that was addressed, or you are purposely ignoring the obvious explanations.
“All your cater walling is helping no one but democrats.”
Ha!! They don’t need my help...not with the Freedom Caucus gang around. The Kenyan is smiling today!!
“Watch. The Freedom Caucus will vote for the budget CR, despite it funding Obamacare.”
Of course they will...they need to keep ObamaCare around so Cruz can run in 2020. That’s what this is all about!!
Up until now, where has “compassionate conservatism” gotten us? More socialism and just about zero conservatism.
“There is no death spiral. There is no implosion. All the costs will be paid.”
Obamacare will live, but many people will die or lose their jobs as a result of skyrocketing healthcare costs.
How would the Ryan bill break the death spiral if 20+ million people were going going to drop their coverage under the CBO estimates? The Democrats would never tell you this, but these would have been mostly healthy people with minimal claims (as opposed to sick people dropping the coverage because they couldn’t afford it).
What is needed is a modification of the 1974 Impoundment Act.
Allow the President to impound funds again!
The drop in coverage would happen because of the cut in subsidies. Healthy people were already leaving before and this will accelerate now because Trump will not enforce the mandate.
Offering up another bit of mechanism complexity:
A favorite way of addressing issues like this is to attach them to a must-pass item of legislation . . . like the debt ceiling or budget CR.
But . . . you can’t do that with Reconciliation. The Parliamentarian will point out, rightly, that the items are entirely different. It’s not reconciling an item of budget. It’s hard enough to do an omnibus bill, and those nearly always have to get 60.
But . . . you just can’t do it. Won’t be allowed.
The right wing is going to have to decide if they want Obamacare or not. There is no path to its removal if no bill at all that can pass the Senate is allowed to move forward.
The American Spectator was okay in the 1990’s, then IIRC almost shut down in the early 2000’s. They don’t even have a print version anymore. I do not know where they get their funding now, but the last I read it was a swampy place? Irrelevant.
Can you get 60 votes for that?
Thanks for the correction.
You may BOTH be right, because the millions “dropping out of the health insurance market” under RyanCare doesn’t necessarily equate to those same millions not being in a risk pool. They’re not in Aetna’s risk pool; they’re not in the Blue Cross risk pool, but they aren’t removed from the general, national risk pool. EVERYONE is in that risk pool by virtue of living in, or traveling in, this country. You get hurt and show up at ER, you’re going to get care insured or not, citizen or not, and that care has a cost that poses a national risk.
What if we ALL just flipped the bird to the insurance industry AND government and went without any healthcare insurance, and EVERYONE were part of their own, individual or family risk pool, and we left it to individual doctors, surgeons, nurses, and hospitals to bill directly for whatever services they rendered? What if we each took responsibility to make our OWN payment arrangements for our medical debts rather act as some amorphous collective of insured persons? Talk about competition that lowers prices, would that not be achieved if health insurance companies all but evaporated — if they were largely eliminated from the cost equation; and care providers were forced to deal with all of us as individual customers, and compete with other providers for our business?
Yeah, you’d get socked with the occasional $xx,xxx hospital bill. But how often? And don’t people already, commonly, visit auto dealerships and saddle themselves with similar $xx,xxx debts that they contract to pay over three, five, or seven years’ time? OK, so that’s voluntary indebtedness v. involuntary indebtedness, but the dollars are the same, so why does that mean the payment method has to be different? Why MUST paying for a $50,000 surgery have to be so god-awful different than paying for a $50,000 SUV?
How have we been suckered into the mentality that same-dollar products and services cannot be paid off in the same way?
I read it daily...but not all articles. Some are very good and some aren’t.
Right — but the insurance pools would continue to slide into insolvency because the people dropping out of them are the ones most needed to keep them solvent.
“It is unbelievable that there are actually Freepers claiming the Freedom Caucus are the problem”
they’re not real Freepers: there’s a new batch of newly activated sleeper accounts and a bunch of nevertrumper accounts that were banned and then unbanned and have morphed into concern trolls. these accounts are leftists trying to stir up trouble here.
No real Freeper who has been paying attention believes that the insurance-company-written RyanCare bill was a good idea or that the Freedom Caucus are not real heroes.
No but where are supermajorities required for legislation in the Constitution? I can’t find the article or section that delineates that! Must be a stupid Senate rule to avoid any real decision making. I doubt if that act was passed via a supermajority!
And rightfully so. It was Obamacare 2.0 with a Republican stamp of approval on it.
Party at Barry Soetoro’s house tonight.
Bring your own coke and ecstasy.
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