Conservatives In Revolt Against GOP Draft ACA Replacement
We all know how this ends:
1) Paul Ryan will cave in to the GOP “hardliners” who want to repeal the ACA outright without a replacement in place.
2) Millions of people will be screwed in the process,
3) At their moment of maximum electoral peril Democrats will bail the GOP out by hacking together some abysmal “compromise” and
4) The GOP will salvage a win at the ballot box by claiming that the entire problem was created by Obama and the Democrats.
The congressional Republican hardliners who have revolted against proposals floated in a leaked draft of a GOP Obamacare replacement plan now have the support of two outside conservative groups, Club for Growth and FreedomWorks
In a statement Tuesday titled “Club for Growth Supports Conservative Opposition to GOP Effort to Retain and Repair Obamacare,” the group’s president David McIntosh said that it “stands” with the members who have signaled objections to the recently surfaced text, which would include several Obamacare replacement provisions within the repeal bill Republicans are hoping to pass this spring. Likewise, the Tea Party group FreedomWorks said in a statement from CEO Adam Brandon that Republicans should follow the model of a 2015 bill that dismantled major parts of the law but was vetoed by President Obama.
“After nearly seven years, it’s time for Republicans to follow through on their promises and repeal ObamaCare by using the 2015 reconciliation bill as the baseline,” Brandon said. “It would be a stunning level of political hypocrisy if Republicans failed to follow through. Thankfully, principled conservatives are fighting for full repeal, not a watered down bill or ObamaCare-lite.”
The Club For Growth statement said the group urged that “the starting point for any repeal be the Obamacare repeal which was passed in Congress in 2015,” while pointing to companion bills introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), a House Freedom Caucus member, as the model for replacement.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows (R-NC) and House Republican Study Committee Chair Mark Walker (R-SC) have said they would have trouble voting for bill resembling the recently surfaced text and that GOP leaders risk losing the votes of many members of their groups, which represent a sizable portion of the House GOP caucus. Meanwhile, Sens. Paul, Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) signaled their support of the House hardliners in coordinated tweets Monday evening.
Among the issues conservatives are raising with the leaked draft are its reworking of the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies into refundable tax credits available to anyone purchasing individual insurance.
Amidst the uproar over the leaked draft, the key congressional GOPers working on the repeal effort have cautioned that it was a work in progress and they were still considering changes.
“I feel at the end of the day when we get everything done and right, we’re going to be unified on this,” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said at a press conference Tuesday.
“At their moment of maximum electoral peril Democrats will bail the GOP out by hacking together some abysmal “compromise”
You can count on misguided liberals to support this, saying “But think of the hostages!” and mocking opponents as purists.
The hostages are already being herded into the hostage pens. But this time we need to let the hostages stand up and fight for themselves. If they do, we’ll both win.
If the GOP goes along with the notion that the federal government should be the ultimate guarantor that everyone has access to health care, there are only two options: either some form of single-payer, or a program based on the private insurance system, and that is pretty much what the Affordable Care Act is right now. If they go with the second, they will have betrayed much of their base, by simply amending Obysmalcare in some way.
That leaves either single-payer, or doing away with the idea that the government will guarantee access to health care.
Our esteemed host wrote:
This idea is wholly unworkable. If someone needs help to buy health insurance, he needs the cash up front to pay the premiums, not something refunded to him once a year, after he files his income taxes. Unless it is structured as a negative income tax, like the earned income tax credit, it won’t help those people who are in the lower brackets in the slightest; if they are paying little to no income tax anyway, the refundable credit doesn’t help them.
Lol. That is the least dumb comment you’ve ever made. I can only assume you are hog tied in your basement and some prowler is using your computer.
Perhaps it’s possible that I don’t completely fit your stereotype of me?
My position on health care is simple: the government should not be responsible for guaranteeing access to health care. If the government is going to be responsible for that, single-payer is the most practical way to do it. Oh, I believe that single-payer would result in far worse health care than we have now, because that has been the experience in virtually every large country with single-payer.
The VA health care scandal didn’t surprise me in the slightest, because the VA was doing what the Canadians and British and other single-payer systems do, and that is to stretch out services and appointments, to save money. If we go to single-payer, the government will have to do what everyone else does, and that’s cut costs; cutting costs inevitably leads to reduced service.
“Oh, I believe that single-payer would result in far worse health care than we have now, because that has been the experience in virtually every large country with single-payer”
ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a nominee for most ignorant comment so far of 2017.
Every time a dumb American says that, A Canadian gets affordable medicine for life-threatening illness.
Yeah. That idiot is not long for this comments section.
I know this is anecdotal. I was with a group of kids on a trip to Scotland to play soccer. One of our players suffered a broken leg. We took him to a hospital and had to fill out a 1/2 page form. He got excellent care including the use of a wheel chair for the rest of the trip. He never saw a bill.
Why, then, did Danny Williams, then the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador choose to come to the United States for heart valve surgery, rather than use Canada’s single-payer system? Why did Jean Chrétien, then Prime Minister of Canada, choose the Mayo Clinic for his family’s health care?
These were both successful politicians, and they had to know just how bad their actions would look politically; why would they have done this if Canadian health care was comparable to that in the United States?
Health care delivery is not the same as quality of surgery
When money and access is of no consequence yeah I suppose the best cardiac surgeon works in the United States. So as long as you are part of the international elite and can fly to Minneapolis or Miami and pay out of pocket for care, yeah then in that narrowest of cases you’re correct.
In the context of this discussion however, that makes no sense. See the difference? The idea is to create a system that works for all the citizens of the country, not just the wealthy elite. This is why every other advanced, industrialized nation has some version of government administered single payer.
@Ben — Yeah, but the ads I saw this morning say that those meds are made in China and filled with life-saving drops of antifreeze and flecks of drywall from which Chris Coons and Tom Carper are protecting us every day.
Shouldn’t we be asking our senators how come most of Canada isn’t dead by now?
I don’t ever want to be critical of other commenters, but really Dana. Your answer to how we get the best care to the most people is to point to rich people flying around the world. We do now provide care to everyone, but for the poor and uninsured it is usually neglect followed by a trip to the ER room, an incredibly inefficient way. We really are all in this together and if people have access to primary care physicians and basic screening we as a nation will have better health at lower cost. A few rich people seeking out the very best has nothing to do with the health care debate.
Please, people. Debating with a troll is pointless. Who gives a fuck what Dana thinks about health care?
His position is simple, wrong and based on the faulty information spread by conservative sources.
“I believe that single-payer would result in far worse health care than we have now, because that has been the experience in virtually every large country with single-payer.”
This is false. In fact, conservatives only ever talk about health care in two countries, Canada and the UK, because they like the occasional horror stories they produce. (Notice that the “horror” amounts to waiting for non-critical surgery). Neither is typical of single-payer systems in other industrialized countries, most of which have the same outcomes than the US at half the cost. Other countries (Germany, France) achieve similar cost and outcomes with multiple payers by heavy regulation.
But the real problem with Dana’s “reasoning” is that he’s trying to have it both ways. If health care is not a right — his preferred position by his own admission — then why do we care for the indigent? And more importantly, why do we care for them as we currently do — in the most expensive way possible? Because, as everyone knows, we do care for the indigent, in many cases after making them indigent in the first place. The bill for that care is passed along to consumers in the cost of their insurance policies.
But here’s the real reason it’s pointless to talk to him: Dana, you see, doesn’t know jack shit about the health care debate. If he wanted to learn, he’d read up on it himself, and not just parrot the horseshit peddled by conservative media.
The notion that the tens thousands of professionals who have worked on this for years know less than some rando conservative is the anti-intellectualism of the right made plain.
PS: The Danny Williams anecdote he repeats is, naturally, more complicated than Fox News described it:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/williamss-heart-surgery-choice-was-based-on-ignorance/article1365308/
Nah ha
Alby wrote:
A commenter on my old, defunct site was a liberal from New Zealand who went by the handle Phoenician in a Time of Romans. He related a story to us about having two ingrown toenails, and how the New Zealand medical system would have taken care of them, for free, but he’d have to wait 12 weeks! I don’t know if you’ve ever had an ingrown toenail, but those things are painful, and the average nail growth rate could have extended his nails completely out the end of his toes in 12 weeks.
Well, he is a government employee, involved in some form of information services with the library system, and he chose to go around the system, and pay for the procedure himself. He claimed that the same podiatrist who was scheduled to care for him in 12 weeks performed the necessary procedures promptly, after hours, for cash. I suppose that he was fortunate that he had the cash on hand to avoid 12 weeks of pain. I guess that was New Zealand’s definition of ‘non-critical.’
Here is Sachi ab Hugh’s story of the first class treatment her father received under Japan’s single-payer system . . . first class because he also had three private insurance policies and her family had the right connections.
If single-payer overseas provided the same quality of care to which Americans are used, why didn’t the Democrats seriously consider it in 2010, when they had the White House and control of both Houses of Congress? For about six months, the Democrats even had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, yet single-payer was never seriously considered, and even the so-called “public option” was taken off the table. The quick cancellation of the “Cornhusker Kickback,” after the Democrats had gotten Ben Nelson’s filibuster-breaking vote proved that the bill could have been amended after that, to include the public option or single-payer, but that was never even tried.
Who knows, maybe the Democrats figured that going single-payer would cost them the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections.
“If single-payer overseas provided the same quality of care to which Americans are used, why didn’t the Democrats seriously consider it in 2010, when they had the White House and control of both Houses of Congress?”
If you don’t know the answer to that, you obviously aren’t interested in learning anything.
Seriously, fella. If you want to learn about the subject, go do the research. We aren’t here to play this game with you, we aren’t here to educate you, we aren’t here to hold “adult conversations” with you.
Your boredom is not our problem.
I suppose there is some utility in knowing what the nation’s dummies think. Although it isn’t as if the dummies perspective is hard to come by.
@jason: This is all a football game to these people. It’s not as if Dana is really interested in health care. He’s interested in his side winning.
I, for one, don’t give a flying fuck what people like this “think,” since it’s all pre-programmed by conservative propagandists. You’ll notice that his “evidence” consists of three anecdotes.
I know idiots like him boost site traffic, but at what price?
Look at his position: Access to health care should be predicated on your ability to pay. Rich people in other countries come to the US for health care, meaning only the rich in those countries can afford to pay for top-rate care.
Do you see the contradiction in what he’s arguing? It boils down to “the rich get better care,” exactly what he’s arguing should be the case in the US. He negates his own argument.
The position is based on his belief, unsupported by any evidence, that under one system he’d be above the line that gets you good care, but under single-payer he’d be below that line.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever had an ingrown toenail, but those things are painful, and the average nail growth rate could have extended his nails completely out the end of his toes in 12 weeks.”
Not only have I had ingrown toenails, I am not such a wuss that I needed surgery to trim them.
Dana raises concerns. Dana cites examples. Alby curses. Alby blows it off. Alby wins the debate! Hahaha.
It’s not a debate. If you’re interested in the topic, go research it.
“Examples” are also known as “anecdotes.” They don’t really matter as evidence. The plural of anecdote is not data.
I’m talking about the quality of Dana’s arguments and contentions. The only thing worth “debating” is whether health care is or is not a right, and whether the government should be involved. I’ve made up my mind on it after years of reading widely. I’m not interested in the opinions of people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
Four anecdotes are better than one. Haha!
Thank you for demonstrating the mental abilities of the Trump voter for us. You can go back to your remedial reading class now.