Free Republic

Health Reform: Friday's decision to pull the American Health Care Act from the House floor because it lacked enough votes to pass was a culmination of months of bad decisions, poor planning, and terrible messaging by the GOP leadership in the House. This failure undermines not only the party's credibility, but President Trump's purported ability to "make great deals." Worse, it emboldens the left-wing "resistance." Back in early December, we warned in this space that the Republican's ObamaCare repeal effort was "off to a bad start." That was when House Speaker Paul Ryan was talking up a "repeal and delay"...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republicans' capstone health care overhaul seemed in dire trouble Friday as Speaker Paul Ryan weighed strategy at the White House with President Donald Trump. GOP lawmakers and aides said they lacked the votes to succeed in the House, just hours before a do-or-die showdown demanded by Trump. GOP leaders pushed toward a climactic House roll call, but their promise to stage the vote increasingly looked like a losing gamble for the new president and his GOP allies in Congress.

Democrats are cheering a new poll which shows that likely 2018 voters shift 33 points away from incumbent GOP legislators once they are given negative information about House Speaker Paul Ryan’s healthcare bill. “Voters [in GOP districts] move from approving of their congressperson by 12 points(46% approve, 34% disapprove) to disapproving by 21 points (35% approve,56% disapprove) — a net shift of 33 percentage points,” says Priorities USA, which commissioned the poll of 1,001 likely voters into the popularity of Ryancare, or the American Health Care Act. The Ryancare bill is intended to supplant Obamacare’s takeover of the nation’s healthcare...

Breaking "Blog" on CNN only..... Speaker Paul Ryan rushed to the White House moments ago to tell Trump that they might not be able to pass the bill if they vote today — the votes just aren't there right now.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, facing a revolt among conservative and moderate Republicans, rushed to the White House Friday afternoon to inform President Trump he did not have the votes to pass legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to decide whether to pull the bill from consideration. The president and the speaker faced the humiliating prospect of a major defeat on legislation promised for seven years, since the landmark health legislation was signed into law. President Trump had demanded a vote regardless, which has been scheduled for Friday afternoon. But House leaders were leaning against such...

While the White House has been careful to exude an air of confidence ahead of this afternoon's critical for the Trump administration healthcare vote, it should come as no surprise that Trump is preparing a Plan B "just in case", and as expected, Bloomberg confirms that behind the scenes Trump is planning to blame Ryan in case of an embarrassing defeat this afternoon. As reported last night, Trump’s senior strategist took the unusual step of traveling to Capitol Hill to deliver an ultimatum: take the vote on Friday, win or lose. Ryan had been carefully trying to build a majority...

The irony is that the Freedom Caucus, which is very pro-life and against Planned Parenthood, allows P.P. to continue if they stop this plan!

Voter opposition to the Republican healthcare bill is the result of misunderstanding, and lawmakers will be able to "really explain it" once it becomes law, Rep. Chris Collins said Thursday. "In my district, right now there's a lot of misunderstanding as to what it is we're doing," the New York Republican said on MSNBC. "And once we get it done, and then we can have the chance to really explain it."

Gabriel Sherman writes that White House chief strategist and former Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon (or, for those concerned with SEO, Steve Bannon) has privately expressed concern that the American Health Care Act (AHCA) betrays the populist voters who put Donald Trump in the White House.

As Republicans prepare to vote on their health care bill, which does not fully repeal Obamacare, a number of Republicans say it’s a mistake to put their names to the plan: “Just let Obamacare collapse, then challenge the Democrats to come in and help us fix the mess they created,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News Friday morning, as lawmakers debated the latest iteration of the bill on the House floor. “President Trump’s going to be judged by the outcome of the legislation, and what I see in the House, I don’t think this legislation is going to move...

Source just now: They might pull the bill altogether. They're getting farther from, not closer to, 215.

House GOP lawmakers are preparing to try to fulfill their promise to repeal Obamacare ... or major portions of it. The House is set to vote on the legislation, called the American Health Care Act, on Friday. Republican leaders have already made several changes to placate both conservatives and moderates, but a number of members in both chambers remain concerned. So a lot may change before it reaches President Trump's desk. Critics have ranged from conservative Republicans to insurers to the AARP. Conservatives complain that the bill does not fully repeal Obamacare and that many provisions are too similar to...

Hours away from a critical vote, House Republicans still don't enough support within their own conference to pass a bill that would partially repeal and replace Obamacare. That's the word from the House floor Friday morning as Republican leaders and the Trump administration scramble to convince enough lawmakers to support a GOP plan that has split the House conference into increasingly bitter factions.

Reports from Capitol Hill today indicate rising exasperation among old-school conservatives about the shifting, raise-the-ante, refuse-to-say-"yes" demands from most members of the House Freedom Caucus, with regard to the upcoming vote on the House Republican healthcare bill. The exasperation is well-justified. The House Freedom Caucus is clearly driven by outside groups such as Heritage Action, which has become such an all-or-nothing, my-way-or-the-highway outfit that it makes Patrick Henry look like a compromising squish. It seems as if every concession made to the Freedom Caucus is met with a new demand. I just returned from a barbecue place in conservative Mobile,...

Multiple polls show that the GOP’s Ryancare healthcare plan is even more unpopular than the perpetually unpopular Obamacare plan or the Democrats’ 1993 “Hillarycare” plan, says FiveThirtyEight.com, which analyses polls, surveys, and data. The GOP overhaul “is much more disliked than the ACA [Obamacare] and [President Bill] Clinton’s health care reform bill were when they were first introduced,” the site reported. March 23. “Across nine surveys, the [American Health Care Act] has garnered an average of just 32 percent in favor compared with 45 percent opposed.”

BREAKING NEWS: After a marathon series of negotiations involving President Trump and his top aides Thursday, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) will call a vote on the proposal at Trump’s behest, lawmakers said after a meeting on Thursday night. But lacking sufficient votes to pass it at this point, Republican leaders were still negotiating to see if they could convince enough conservatives to back the measure. “They’re going to bring it up, pass or fail,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho). This story is developing. It will be updated. *** House leaders postponed a vote Thursday on their plan to...

Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney made clear Thursday evening that President Donald Trump is done negotiating on the hotly-debated health care bill and wants a vote on Friday. And, if the president doesn't get a vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, he will move on to other priorities, Mulvaney said according to a source in the room during the tense talks with GOP members. The latest salvo comes after House Republican leaders abruptly postponed a planned vote on the GOP health care bill Thursday as they struggled to find sufficient support to pass it. GOP lawmakers had...

GOP House leaders delayed their planned vote Thursday on a long-promised bill to repeal and replace "Obamacare," in a stinging setback for House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Donald Trump in their first major legislative test. The decision came after Trump, who ran as a master dealmaker, failed to reach agreement with a bloc of rebellious conservatives. Moderate-leaning Republican lawmakers were also bailing on the legislation, leaving it short of votes. [...]

Update 3:29 p.m.: House leaders have canceled a planned Thursday night vote on a Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, according to a GOP source. There was no immediate word when the vote might happen. This story will be updated. Original story: President Donald Trump and conservative House Freedom Caucus members failed to strike a deal on the GOP Obamacare replacement Thursday, endangering the prospects of passage and all but assuring any immediate vote on the measure would fail. Negotiations between Trump and the arch-conservatives opponents of the bill reached at least a temporary standstill after Freedom Caucus members...

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump and House Republicans are still scrambling to reach a deal on legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare ahead of what is expected to be a dramatic vote Thursday. House Speaker Paul Ryan held a long meeting Wednesday night in his office with moderate Republicans. Cameras from networks were set up for possible reactions and readouts, but it was clear leadership had no good news to share. With the exception of a few members who rushed away without speaking to press, all leaders, including Ryan, ducked out using side exits.