Posted on 07/10/2017 6:01:41 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Republicans pretend that they are powerless to do more about the great ship Obamacare than to change the fuel on which it runs and rearrange its deck chairs — never mind to sink it. Because they lack 60 votes to stop “unlimited debate,” they claim to be unable to vote even on whether to allow health insurance to be sold across state lines. They pretend to believe that fidelity to unlimited debate in the Senate trumps the importance of our health care system. But the reason why they prop up Obamacare rather than tearing it down is that they are even more beholden to the insurance companies and hospital chains than the Democrats who passed it in the first place.
Neither the filibuster nor the requirement of 60 votes to “cloture” it prevents voting and passing anything that a majority wishes to pass. Moreover, Senate rules can be made or changed by simple majorities. In practical terms, even without “cloture,” a minority’s protracted talk cannot stop a determined majority from voting. Potential filibusters learned long ago that talking nonsense to hold the floor day and night for weeks on end breaks them physically and discredits them politically. But the main reason why no one has tried a real filibuster for more than a half century is that, in 1970, the Senate adopted a “two track” procedure, by which, once a bill fails to gain enough votes to impose cloture (since 1975 that number has been 60), the Senate simply goes on to other business. This has resulted in countless bills having been effectively filibustered to death without a word having being spoken, without anyone having incurred any effort or risk. This, the avoidance of votes on risky, controversial matters — not any commitment to extended debate — is what senators of both parties find so attractive about the modern “virtual filibuster.”
Today however, Republicans are even more unwilling than Democrats to take responsibility for basic choices. The Democrats’ Obamacare made health insurance companies into public utilities. This is what the companies wanted. Republicans had joined them in working out similar schemes (vide the Heritage Foundation plan and Romney-care in Massachusetts) and resented being left out of the action.
If Republicans were serious about voting on any provision regarding health care, or anything else, they would not have to bother eliminating the filibuster. It would be enough to dare opponents actually to wage real ones — complete with minority senators babbling and majority senators sleeping on cots ready to answer quorum calls.
Real filibusters advertise the minority’s fatal political liability: refusal to confront the questions at hand. Because holding the floor to the exclusion of the majority makes it impossible to confute the majority, “extended debate” refutes no one and persuades no one. As the minority filibusters with scattershot or nonsense, the majority can repeat demands for roll-call votes to decide on matters at hand.
Medicare IS a form of socialized medicine.
Our government sucks. Political parties are a den of whores.
Problem is they don't want to.
Why?
Because then they'll be held accountable for repealing and replacing Obamacare, and they don't want that. Period.
Obamacare is a DISASTER, the should've let it collapse on its own. The Republican's could've OWNED this issue for 2018 and 2020 and lauded it over the Democrats heads. They could've seen to it that the Democrat party was dead for a generation.
By starting all this repeal & replace nonsense they're now going to be (and they already are being..) blamed for every single person that "loses" their insurance.
While we're at it, let's be CLEAR what "loses" means: They're losing the SUBSIDY that WE TAXPAYERS have been paying for them. Why am I paying grossly inflated insurance premium rates and ridiculous out of pocket deductibles through my employer when these welfare leeches are getting their healthcare essentially "free" to them while I pay, and pay, and pay?
Let Obamacare collapse, President Trump. You and the Republican Party didn't create this mess. The Democrats did. LET THEM OWN IT!
Crony capitalist rent seeking, supporting and supported by the uniparty, of course.
Well, where are all these principled conservatives who can rise up and lead Congress to repeal? They’ve done nothing but talk and now can’t deliver.
You want to bash the Senate, fine. But let’s not leave out the House and the so-called teaparty members and do-nothing caucus members.
You're right. I should have used the generic "Congress" to take in both houses.
Either this is a reach or what we've been told about the market collapsing has been posturing and positioning. Why? IF the Senators are beholden to insurance companies, then why are they are insurance companies abandoning the marketplace if the like it?
Same old, same old. They build a big trough, fill it with someone else’s money, and THEIR hogs gather. The political theatre they manufacture is to divert attention from their looting of the country. It’s no mystery why the rest of the nation experiences recessions and other economic calamities, but Washington never misses a beat.
Health insurers are doing just fine. They are raking it in from Medicare and Medicaid, and from premium plans and administration. The state exchange plans lose money, so they’re bailing. Check out the stock market trends of prices and profits for health insurance companies. We should all have it so good.
Also because the corporate GOP can foist the cost onto the government instead of paying for them themselves.
It appears most Republican “Representatives” couldn't care less.
Your post is spot on.
“What about the states that signed up for the Medicaid expansions? How do you arbitrarily reduce that funding?”
It all has to be broken out. If it is medicaid, it is no longer Obamacare. Things like medical device taxes have to be removed. Because the law is so intertwined with everything else out there, trying to fix it will require all the tentacles to be identified and analyzed, something Obamacare probably didn’t account for since it was intended to redistribute money.
This is why it is easier to just leave it in place and let it die a natural death. Plus politically, if you leave it in place and just write another bill to handle tort reform and selling across state lines, the rats cannot complain and they are still on the hook.
I am all for your idea....of letting it stay in place to die a natural death....I just don't trust Big Club™ (Dims/Repubs/lobbyists, COC) to let such gravy train taxes simply die a natural death. 😩
Spot on!
The cost of healthcare in the US is the underlying, unaddressed, and omnipotent cause of all these problems. No Obamacare repeal or reform, no changes to insurance regulations, and no Medicare Medicade reforms will fix this without radical change that will be too difficult for the majority of Americans in both parties, too easily demonized and politically impossible.
My comments on that particular point are based on what I've seen posted here by people in their 50s and early 60s who have private insurance coverage.
Exactly. That explains why the program is inevitably heading towards insolvency, and why it is always dealing with the core underlying flaw of our entire health care system (reliance on third party payments for almost all procedures and treatments).
Our crooks are just as corrupt as their crooks?
Obamacare was written y lobbyists for lobbyists and I predicted long before the Supreme traitor Roberts imposed upon us this illegal monstrosity would become law because both parties were bought and paid for. I also said once imposed it would never go away.
The constitution will never be reinstated by the very same people that worked so hard to work around it and hoping for that is wishful thinking. I said that Trump would have to use the same tactics that Obama did to get us anywhere close to a constitutional Republic. What we really need is a Patriotic Tyrant.
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