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Breaking: House GOP Withdraws AHCA
Published in GeneralBREAKING: House Republicans, short of votes, withdraw health care bill.
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 24, 2017
Very true, but I would have rather that the Dems killed the bill in the Senate, rather than giving fodder to the narrative that it is all the Republicans’ fault. We didn’t lose this battle today. We lost it when the battle cry stopped being “Repeal!” and became “Repeal and Replace!” There is no “replacement” for a bill that forces everyone to buy health insurance, unless you are willing to allow people who don’t want health insurance to not buy health insurance. By definition.
KRAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
Sorry, that was my triumphal roar.
I heard it was a pretty bad bill. It was not a repeal and replace bill. My understanding was that full repeal would have needed 60 votes in the senate, whereas this legislation could have passed with only 51. Under those circumstances, Pelosi was right: the defeat of this bill was a victory. The GOP needs to win 10 Senate seats to put this away for good. In the meantime, the politics can be played such that every premium increase is laid at the Democrats’ feet.
President Trump should move on for now. But when the midterm campaigns begin, full repeal should be an issue. And people will be ready to hear it if their costs go up enough.
It’s probably pointless to say it now, with Democrats celebrating and the headlines blaring humiliation, but it’s really no defeat. The real humiliation and defeat would have been in not having done a full repeal, and then having to defend a half-assed replacement. Not fun.
Exactly. If there is such a thing as consensus to be built in the House, repeal like what was done six times is where to find it. Get there and worry about the Senate later. No one seems to even understand anymore that a Senate adoption of what the House sends over is not the only way law gets made. There can be amendments and then there will be a conference to settle differences. When did we ever get in this mode of trying to produce a final bill in the first step without letting anyone know what is in it until it is passed. There can still be some possibles to help desperate cases without mandating it into private health insurance plans.
Paul Ryan is the nice, smart, young man who’s been living in his parents basement for the past decade and now that he has emerged is having trouble adjusting to the outside world. Donald Trump doesn’t know much of substance and doesn’t care, as long as something was passed. We are in the best of hands.
Paul Ryan must be replaced. He’s a disaster as Speaker. He’s the prototypical “Me too, Democrats, just less” Republican.
Deep-sixing a flawed bill is better than what the Democrats did in passing Obamacare. Everyone knows now that OCare was a disaster, which was passed with [REDACTED], lies, and deception on an epic scale. Democrats will never live this down. Some of us saw through it from the get go. It was probably smart to kill the bill.
As an aside, it’s interesting how the Journal’s editorial, “The Obamacare Republicans,” sets this up as Trump vs the Freedom Caucus. This is so wrong. It may be that Trump was saved from making a huge mistake. Who wants to defend a reformed Obamacare?
Agree, but how did the Republicans allow themselves to go so far down the same road taken by those Democrat fools? Hard to believe what we were seeing.
Don’t know much about Obamacare, but why would someone with means subscribe to Medicaid even if they scheme their way onto it? Many Docs won’t even take it. It’s the lowest level of care the USA has to offer, and the least comfortable to use.
If people are allowed to not have health insurance because they refuse to buy it, than are we willing to allow providers to refuse treatment without cash payment?
The House did not have six years to work on this. Nobody could have known, six years ago, that Trump would be elected and would promise that under his replacement for Obamacare nobody would lose their health insurance. Basically, Trump campaigned on a promise to repeal Obamacare and replace it with Obamacare, and that’s what the House obligingly tried to do. The Freedom Caucus that blocked this bill consists of the very conservative Congressmen who the Trump lovers praised during the last six years – everyone else was proclaimed a RINO sellout. Now it’s Trump that is the RINO sellout, but his supporters don’t want to acknowledge that fact. If the “American Healthcare Act” had been proposed by Obama (and it certainly could have been) every Democrat would have voted for it. We’re not talking about healthcare anymore. This is all just political theater, on both sides.
It’s nice that you think that the premium increases will be laid at the Democrats’ feet, but since you have Republicans yelling at Republicans that Republicans are liars when it comes to their intent, I don’t think Republicans can now run on Republicans repealing and replacing much with any credibility.
The other thing that Republicans were doing here was trying to give me a tax cut, which would have been very nice. And defund Planned Parenthood, which was a thing they have wanted to do forever. Then there were the artificial savings the OMB identified, which would have made tax reform later easier to sell as “revenue neutral” with other reforms. None of this was a fix, but it was a pulling at the threads of the sweater.
Instead… Nothing.
I am. But are “we”? Apparently not. At least Trump is not, and without leadership from him it is not going to get done.
I would be fine with that system, but the answer is “no.”
You guys are also blaming Paul Ryan for this bill, which I think he could have rolled out much better, but it is Donald Trump who has talked about not reducing benefits in any way nor addressing entitlements. He has said he wants EVERYONE to have access to insurance, soooooo….
I *get* that the Freedom Caucus wanted some help with costs, which is why the proposal shifted the ability to require various benefits to the states… the thing that Pelosi was crowing about stopping from happening. We saved the people!!! Because we care about them and Republicans don’t!!!
Does the Freedom Caucus believe in state government or not?
Perhaps the bill wasn’t great, but what was chosen was in reality Obamacare.
Yay?
The Republicans own that now, and they’ll get blamed for it.
At least that’s my opinion.
Also, the president looks weak.
I guess I’m fine with that because I don’t love Trump. I’m fine with Congress taking back some of its power. But making a president ineffective in his first 100 days doesn’t bode well for Republican initiatives I actually like.
It’s not great to wound your leaders.
And yeah. That includes Ryan.
That is exactly right.
It seems to me that this is a different issue entirely.
Republicans have supported medical research. I believe they have a good record on this, actually.
Education is certainly a different category.
I actually was responding to a post that called it “healthcare”. I agree with you, but what we are discussing here is a healthcare payment system (insurance,etc) not a healthcare delivery system/s.
Fair enough. :)
Anybody who thinks the political effects of this will be good for Republicans or conservatives is dreaming. Yes, Obamacare will get worse and worse, but it will not disappear. Republicans will get at least half the blame for this, since they told everybody they could fix it, and then couldn’t or wouldn’t. The result will be a slide towards single-payer, as was the Democrats plan all along.
I keep hearing “better no bill than a bad bill.” But we already have bad law. The status quo is bad. It would have been better to undo some of it, as this bill did, than to do nothing.
A few features of Ryan’s bill that didn’t get much attention during the debate.
[1] Ryan’s bill would have given the states much more flexibility over how to spend Medicaid. This has been a goal since 1995 when Newt Gingrich was speaker.
[2] Ryan’s bill would have reduced Medicaid spending by the federal government by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next ten years by placing a cap of how much money the federal government would give the states in Medicaid.
[3] Ryan’s bill would have expanded Health Savings Accounts, encouraging people to save for future health care expenses by making deposits to their HSA tax free.
[4] Ryan’s bill would have repealed the employer mandate for employers with 50 or more employees providing health insurance to all “full time” employees, with “full time” defined as 30 or more hours per week. This employer mandate has encouraged businesses to cut the hours of their employees to 29 hours per week.
So, basically, House Republicans looked at Ryan’s bill and said, “No thanks.”
Just because Ryan’s bill didn’t include the deregulation of the insurance market (due to worries about the Senate rules) does not mean that Ryan’s bill wasn’t conservative in most respects.
Right? Most people, it seems to me, have forgotten compromise. Ryan’s bill wasn’t perfect, but it did a lot of good things. Now the Freedom Caucus has nothing. And they are fooling themselves if they think they’ll get any credit for simply stopping the process. It’s not as if this wasn’t still in debate when it went to the Senate. Now it’s just dead. And I got nothing.