What a shame, the Senate’s terrible, no good, does-not-actually-repeal-Obamacare plan, similar to the House’s does-not-actually-repeal-Ocare plan, has collapsed, as it has not garnered the necessary support. Talking Point Memo’s Tierney Sneed plays it straight in reporting what comes next (interestingly, the article from the hardcore left site is more straight news than most of the Legacy Media outlets)
Not long after the defections of two more Senate Republicans made the GOP Obamacare replacement bill dead in the water, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced Monday night he would let members vote for a “repeal only†amendment, if they are able to get the base health care legislation that was passed in the House onto the floor.
My statement on an upcoming vote to repeal #Obamacare pic.twitter.com/RdyDiUJfMD
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) July 18, 2017
Under the plan laid out by McConnell’s statement Monday, if the Senate Republicans are willing to advance the repeal-and-replace bill passed in the House in a procedural vote, they will get a chance to vote on an amendment to replace it with a “repeal only†approach, similar to a 2015 bill Congress passed that was vetoed by President Obama. It’s unclear what the next steps would be if the vote on the amendment failed.
This should be very interesting. The GOP did this numerous times while Obama was POTUS, especially in the House. But, not, they know that if a repeal bill passes Congress, POTUS Trump will sign it. So, it’s not for show. Will the squishier members show their true squishiness? If the GOP does not get a repeal bill through, you can bet that they can kiss Congress goodbye over the next one to two election cycles. McConnell is taking a big risk here, but, you can also bet he’ll be letting members know what will happen to their majorities and individual seats if they do not vote to kill Ocare.
But, is this really repeal? Sundance explains
Correction, I just noticed McConnell’s trickery, the 2015 bill was a defunding bill, not a repeal. McConnell is just tricking people into thinking this was going in the direction of a repeal. It’s not.
The GOP have never, ever, voted for a repeal. That would take 60 votes. They voted in 2015 to defund it using the 51 vote threshold of ‘reconciliation’. They’ve never once had a repeal vote on Obamacare.
Therefore, if this actually goes to a vote, this appears to be constructed simply as an exercise to prove a vote was taken. ObamaCare remains and the implosion continues. McConnell’s political calculation here is trickery. Nothing more. O-Care remains.
An interesting point. Does McConnell go this route, or does he actually go for repeal, which would require either some trickery or the nuclear option?
Hot Air is reporting that the trick McConnell is planning to use is to attach RyanCare as the default for two years with the repeal vote on ObamaCare. http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/18/collapse-mcconnell-gives-bcra/
Putintrumpski is going to punish the American people because the GOP Congress can’t pass a bill to punish the American people.What a leader.
Why does the GOP hate Americans?
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV): “I didn’t come to Washington to hurt people.”
With this, she captured the mood of the nation concerning Health Care – which in a recent survey, 35% of Americans tagged as their greatest concern.
Medicaid, which GOPKare proposes to slash to support tax cuts for the wealthy, supports our poor, the elderly and special needs children. Do you really think a mother with a disabled child will gently accede to trumpski’s plan to withdraw health care for her sick child? This is the point of the spear where the Con Men’s Ayn Rand ideology runs into human realities.
Remember when trumpski crowed that his health care plan would cover everyone and for lower costs? We guess he forgot that just as he forgot his campaign’s meetings with Russian agents.
None of the Republican plans have been anything more than Obaminablecare Lite, because there are only so many ways you can utilize the private, for-profit insurance system to force coverage for everybody.
The plain fact is that about half of Republicans — including me — objects to Obysmalcare not due to the way in which it attempts to provide insurance coverage for everyone, but that the government is trying to provide health care coverage for those who cannot or will not pay for it themselves in the first place. The problem is that the other half of Republicans might hate Obumblecare but agree with the cockamamie notion that the government should be responsible for providing health care coverage, and the GOP’s electoral advantage depends in part on a significant number of people who would lose health insurance or Medicaid if the current law is repealed.
There are only two significant ways to change the laughably-named Affordable Care Act: either total repeal, with no replacement, or single-payer.
Dana:
It’s pretty clear that the American people prefer single payer over the actual conservative objective, which is to get the gov’t out of health care.
Personally, I don’t care what the American people prefer: taking money from people who earn it to give to those who do not is robbery, plain and simple.
My social policy is a reflection of 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
dana,
I’m not surprised, most Right-Wing Authoritarians (RWAs) are not fans of democracy anyway.
Fortunately, the US is not a theocracy based on the ramblings of stone-age goatherders, so 2 Thessalonians 3:10 is irrelevant to our social policies. We fully understand the allure of bumper sticker personal philosophies but it’s no way to run a complex society. Ya’don’t work ya’ don’t eat!
You are in a distinct minority when you call taxation robbery. And you yourself say you are entitled to the full benefits of Social Security and Medicare even though you will take away much more than you ever contributed. You are a cancer diagnosis away from “taking money from people who earn it to give to those who do not”. As a principled whatever-you-are why not put a stake and the ground and say no more government largesse, even for you! And who purchases your concrete?
in 1852 a committee appointed by the governor of Vermont wrote a report for the legislature which included the following:
Taxation is the price which we pay for civilization, for our social, civil and political institutions, for the security of life and property, and without which, we must resort to the law of force.
Ya’ don’t work ya’ don’t eat! If a hard-working but poor young couple has a child with a severe disability that runs their private insurance life-time limit out in year one, would you see fit to have your taxes pay for her care or should she just be allowed to die to decrease the surplus population?
Ya’ don’t work ya’ don’t eat! How about the frail 78 year old with no family left who lives in a Medicaid bed in a nursing home? Turn them on the street? Should she have planned better for her old age?
What about the nice Catholic couple with 4 kids, each with a reliable but low-paying job, who rely on state-run Medicaid for the health care needs? A penny or two of your tax burden (and mine, which is suspect is MUCH greater than yours) goes to take care of them. What is your advice? Fewer children, better jobs?
You and trump may find that acceptable but fortunately the mass of Americans that you care nothing about disagree with you.
And here’s what Vladimir Lenin wrote in 1917 (The State and Revolution):
So Paul’s ghostwriter and Lenin were aligned in their cruelty. WWJD?
So, little jeffuckery, how’d that Lenin thing turn out?
Товарищ Владимир Ильич was right on some things. Just why should someone who is unwilling to work be supported by the labor of those who do? Can you give us one f(ornicating) reason why an able-bodied but lazy man who could work, and for whom there is a job available — after all, we are importing Mexicans to do those jobs — but will not shouldn’t be allowed to starve to death?
dana,
And that’s a red herring. How many able-bodied but lazy men who could work and where there are jobs available actually refuse to work? And how do they survive? Do we have a gov’t mechanism for supporting able-bodied but lazy men who refuse to work? What is it? Unemployment insurance? Welfare? Disability?
You have mentioned single payer healthcare a number of times. Do you support that? Wealthy folks certainly pay more into the system than poorer folks do. Do you find that unfair?
I can still remember the public laments, on liberal talk radio out of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, that there were just no jobs for black men in the city, when I was selling concrete to crews which were primarily Mexican. The jobs were there; they just wouldn’t take them.
I hate single-payer, I despise single-payer, I abominate single-payer, but I suspect that’s what we’ll get.
Jeffrey asked:
Of course it’s unfair, and the Sixteenth Amendment was the greatest evil ever foisted upon a free people. The original Constitution had it right; people should be taxed as individuals, and not based on their income.
The best thing I can say about single-payer is that, assuming it’s some form of Medicare expansion, everybody will have to pay in something for their coverage. Oh, it still won’t be fair, not in the slightest.