Dems Still Pretending Law is a Success
Republican leaders have also been stung by the law, but in a different way. Their conservative constituents gave them a strong majority in both the House and the Senate, in part due to the hope that they would repeal Obamacare. But House leader John Boehner and Senate leader Mitch McConnell seemed only to be interested in conducting business as usual, and voter anger is almost palpable, leading to huge support for political outsider Donald Trump as the leading Republican contender for the 2016 presidential election.
As a result, the push to repeal Obamacare, and to a lesser extent to cut funding for abortion provider Planned Parenthood, could be nothing more than theater as Republicans work to keep control of the restive conservative segment of their constituency. That remains to be seen.
“What we are doing is listening to our constituents, who’ve told us that they’ve had one bad experience after another with Obamacare,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, Texas Republican, said.
The Senate passed the bill along party lines, 52-47, with only two Republicans — Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois and Susan Collins of Maine — defecting because it also strips federal funding from Planned Parenthood for one year in the wake of videos showing organization officials negotiating the sale of fetal body parts.
Republicans used a budget process known as “reconciliation” that allowed them to pass a revenue-related bill by a majority vote, without having to overcome Democratic-led filibusters that have doomed every previous Obamacare repeal.
Hoping to make Mr. Obama squirm a bit as he picks up his pen, Republicans argued sweeping wins in the 2014 mid-terms gave them a mandate to crusade against the health-care law, which they’ve blamed for rising premiums, narrow doctor networks and a host of other ills.
The nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth Group, recently said it is losing money on the law’s exchange and may pull out entirely by 2017, while more than half of Obamacare’s 23 nonprofit co-ops will not offer plans in 2016, fueling the GOP’s arguments.
In a major address Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said axing the health care law would remain the GOP’s top priority, even if this year’s repeal effort is doomed.
“We think this problem is so urgent that, next year, we are going to unveil a plan to replace every word of Obamacare,” the Wisconsin Republican said at the Library of Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, and his chief lieutenants scrambled in recent weeks to gather 51 votes for the reconciliation bill from its 54-member caucus, after an intense debate between pro-lifers who desperately want to defund Planned Parenthood and other conservatives who said the House-passed Obamacare provisions didn’t go far enough.
The Senate’s beefed-up version would phase out the law’s exchange subsidies for private plans and the expansion of Medicaid in select states.
That was designed to win backing of Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah, who said it wasn’t enough to just scrap the law’s insurance mandates on individuals and employers and its taxes on medical device sales and generous employer plans.
The chamber made other decisions look easy.
By a whopping 90-10 margin, senators voted to fully repeal Obamacare’s so-called “Cadillac tax” on generous health-insurance plans, displaying a bipartisan appetite to scrap the tax that takes effect in 2018, although Congress hasn’t found a way to replace $90 billion in anticipated revenue over the next decade.
Though many Democrats are willing to scrap the unpopular tax, they blasted Senate Republicans for attempting to phase out the law’s expansion of Medicaid to those making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
They also warned Republicans to leave Planned Parenthood alone, now and in the future. Federal dollars cannot be spent directly on abortion, so Republicans were taking away a range of health services as part of its bid to topple the organization, they said.
Obamacare has been shown to be a scam that had nothing to do with providing health insurance to those without it, since many signups are simply consumers moving from their preferred plan which has suddenly gone out of business, to a government exchange plan that is more expensive and provides fewer benefits. Of course it is also a wealth transfer plan because lower income buyers have all or most of their premiums subsidized, leading to a huge cost to the Federal government that keeps piling up more and more debt. It is clear that this outrageous intrusion into the financial and physical well-being of the American people is a gigantic failure and continues to exist because of the public relations campaign of the main stream media and the nonsensical declarations of success by the corrupt and clueless Democrat party, led by the chief liar, President Barrack Obama.
It remains to be seen if the Republicans will live up to their claims that they will get rid of the entire mess, and no one who has watched the whole debacle over the last six years is holding out for a complete win. But the wild card of Donald Trump has shaken the Republican party and may serve to get them off their empty platitudes and to actually listen to and represent their party members.
Source: www.washingtontimes.com
