Posted on 03/31/2017 1:45:02 PM PDT by Red Steel
[Full title] MEADOWS: The Obamacare mandates, there are 12 of them. Mark Meadows says Freedom Caucus will go along with AHCA if it kills community rating and EHB regulations
In the debate over repealing and replacing Obamacare, Republican leadership complains that conservatives have been moving the goal post. And Mark Meadows says they're right.
"Well we have," the Freedom Caucus chairman admits with a sigh during a sit-down interview with the Washington Examiner. "We've moved it much closer. All they have to do is kick a little chip shot through the goal posts...."
This comes after weeks of intense negotiation with leadership and the White House on the best way to overhaul Obamacare. But Meadows says his group of three dozen conservatives aren't asking for one thing before demanding another. Instead, he insists that the Freedom Caucus is conceding.
The group has abandoned their demand for a clean repeal. They're not asking Speaker Ryan to clear the slate and start over. Just eliminating the Obamacare mandates for coverage of Essential Health Benefits and the price controls known as "Community Rating," Meadows said "would bring the vast majority of the Freedom Caucus to a yes."
Before it went down in flames, the American Health Care Act only eliminated two of Obamacare's 12 mandates, specifically the individual and employer mandates. If Ryan can kick two more mandates, then he can get the win.
That can't be that hard Meadows said, considering Republicans campaigned on getting rid of Obamacare completely. "In the end," he said, "the request is pretty simple, just two more of the 12 Obamacare mandates."
Trump should never have pressured them in this direction, and should have proposed a clean repeal and free market solution.
Sigh.
Are we now going to attack the Freedom Caucus?
This sounds good to me.
Ryan wanted it to fail, and he wanted to blame the conservatives and embarrass Trump at the same time..................
Same here...
We are going to lament that Trump has attacked them over his first, horrendous piece of legislation. Doesn’t bode well at all.
waking up...smelling re-election ahead...good!
Now negotiate a deal. We know it’s going to be completely different after the Senate gets done with it anyway, but let’s get the process started.
Purists: hold onto your angst, there will be plent more for you to piss and moan about when the Senate bill is ready.
GMTA...I checked in all day to see if anyone posted this article.
Finally did it myself just a short while ago:
Freedom Caucus’s reasonable demand on Obamacare repeal
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3539875/posts
Translation: Uncle. Trump wins. We will deal. We don’t want him doing a deal with the Dem’s. Please give us at least a crumb so we can save face.
Straight out of Art of the Deal.
Too many Repubics don’t want a clean repeal and as Mark Levin stated there hasn’t been a “free market” in healthcare.
“This comes after weeks of intense negotiation with leadership and the White House on the best way to overhaul Obamacare. “
This mindset of overhaul is the problem. REPEAL.
Some may not like Trump’s methods, but he got them talking again, which is Rush Limbaugh’s take on this. Meadows sorta admits that the FC was moving the goal posts in the article. Likely political posturing from all sides.
Every journey starts with a single step.
Sounds good. Negotiate this crap out in the open and up front.
That would break their promise to their voters.
This is dead on arrival in the House and Senate. Taking away protections for people with pre-exisiting conditions “community rating” is not going to get the House to 216 and is certainly dead on arrival in the Senate where GOP can’t lose more than 2 votes.
Those are the facts.
Over the past 16 years the art of negotiating has almost disappeared. This is a great step toward moving D.C. Away from disfuntional
The GOP voted for it in the past, and Trump should have gone both to the people and to Congress to hold them to passing what they all ran on to get elected and re-elected over the past 6 years.
And “replace”, as a free market solution, means taking away the government interventions that gummed up the market previously: the McCarron-Ferguson Act and the tax deductibility of employer-provided insurance.
Because Trump is also talking about reducing personal income tax rates, he had the perfect opportunity to do the two together: get employers out of the healthcare market and move to lower rates, with the removal of tax deductibility offsetting the hit to the treasury.
That’s what he should have done, but instead he went in the completely opposite, Obama-like direction.
Disgusting.
Meadows sorta admits that the FC was moving the goal posts in the article.
Admits that they’re moving goalposts in the direction of Trump, i.e., the opposite of what they have been accused.
I also predict that some of the same people who have been praising the Freedom Caucus for making a principled stand will soon be calling them sellouts for not staying strong...
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