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Republican leadership endorses Obamacare

Yesterday the Republican leadership in Congress unveiled their proposed replacement for Obamacare.

This is not a repeal. It proudly keeps many of the Obamacare provisions that have made health insurance unprofitable, which is why Obamacare and the entire health insurance industry is going bankrupt. First, the Republican proposal keeps the Obamacare requirement that forces insurance companies to accept applicants with pre-existing conditions at no extra charge. Insurance cannot work under this condition. Second, the plan forces insurance companies to cover the children of customers until they are 26.

Several articles today outline the stupidity of this new plan:

From the first article above:

The first thing to understand about the GOP healthcare bill is that it is not merely Obamacare-lite or a bad “replacement” bill. It doesn’t repeal the core of Obamacare in the first place. In fact, the few parts that it repeals or tweaks within a few years will actually intensify the death spiral of Obamacare when mixed with the core regulatory structure, exacerbated by the subsidies that they do keep. And this time, the GOP will own it politically. All of it.

As I say, this is downright stupid. By trying to “fix” this horrible law, all the Republican leadership accomplishes is to poison themselves with it, something Republicans have so far been able to avoid.

The Republicans shouldn’t be passing a different version of Obamacare, they should be trying to repeal it entirely. If the Democrats continue to obstruct, they will then have to face the voters in 2018 in an election that does not favor them to begin with.

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19 comments

  • Orion314

    My first big disappointment with TRUMPCO. The word republican seems to be just a different way to spell democrat.

  • Patrick Ritchie

    Would be curious as to your thoughts on the bill introduced by Rand Paul to replace Obamacare?

    http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/25/sen-rand-paul-introduces-replacement-for

  • Cotour

    2800 pages of an already enacted law is a very hard thing for an empowered sitting politician to just discard, I never thought that they had the stones to do it. Passing a new law would be a monumental task from their point of view, even though they have the majority right now.

    Q: If the Republicans eliminate the mandate today can the democrats reinstate it tomorrow because it originates from the same, whole ACA law? If the law still exists in its entirety then I would assume you could go back in and choose what the party of the day wants.

    From my point of view seeing that they are going to eliminate the mandate is a step forward but in a perfect world I want that law flushed and a new 30 page max. law to replace it. I want to be able to buy a policy from any company, over state lines, I want to select the things that I want included (I do not need maternity care) I want to select my level of deductible before insurance pays AND I want a health savings plan that can be invested and accrues value that remains in my name and control and ownership and I can receive a tax deduction for the money that I contribute to the account.

    Thats what I want to begin with as a healthcare foundation for myself, and I will pay for it. If you pay for it you should be able to get what you want.

    Trump is wed to his fellow Republicans, neither of them are happy about that and both are yoked with the reality of politics in today’s America, compromise.

  • Cotour

    Related, because all of this stuff may be breaking the dam:

    This is happening: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/world/europe/wikileaks-cia-hacking.html?_r=0

    Then I sent an email to a friend, and what I said to him was that this story about Wikileaks releasing this kind of information about the CIA had the potential to set of something that would lead right to 9-11. Then he sent me this, Alex interviewing Steve Pieczenik, enjoy (pay attention).

    https://youtu.be/ReGV9CiVadM

    The internet has disturbed the force to an extent that is now uncontrollable. What will the strategy be to counter act it? Push your imagination to its max. But then Trump happened, Wiki knows Trump is not one of them.

    Anything can happen now, even restoring the country? Crazy now, and its going to get crazier.

  • wayne

    McConnell, Ryan, and Chief of Staff Priebus, are all progressive statists who love all these massive entitlement programs and have zero intention of dismantling any of the Administrative Welfare State.
    We are 20 trillion in debt with 200 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
    30 million people have free cell phones, 40 million people are on SNAP, and 90 million people are not in the labor force.
    The Federal Reserve has been printing money, non-stop for 8 years, their balance sheet is off the chart and they have no way to sterilize all that money. When Yellen raises interest rates the financial-asset bubble will implode.

    Crony Chronicles: I Want To Be A Crony
    https://youtu.be/2aO9tA5DWJM
    (1:39)

  • ken anthony

    Every republican in congress should be forced to read this.

  • Edward

    Here’s another article:
    http://www.dailywire.com/news/14161/ryancare-5-serious-problems-republican-replacement-ben-shapiro#
    In 2010, angry Americans elected Republicans to the House of Representatives in the belief that Republicans would fight tooth and nail to repeal Obamacare. In 2014, Republicans took the Senate by making the same promise. In 2016, President Trump won election on the basis of repealing the “disaster” of Obamacare. Now it’s 2017. Republicans have a majority in the House and Senate. President Trump is in the White House. And instead of repealing Obamacare, they now plan to trim around the edges. … So, well done, Republicans. Instead of putting forward a gradual repeal of Obamacare, you’ve actually created a gradual cementing of key elements of Obamacare, all to avoid the political blowback.

    Promises made, promises broken. Just like Obama himself.

    This is why I dumped the Republicrat Party. They are no different from the Democrats, except In Name Only. Why put them in power when they are only going to elect lifelong Democrats as president and solidify the fiasco that the Democans put in place.

    These bozoids are not only going to keep the turd, Obamacare, in place but are going to rename it Republicancare and own the turd outright, rather than the Democrats owning it.

    I was going to give him his full 100 days before making a judgement on Trump, but this betrayal tells me all I need to know. His track record, so far:
    1) Clinton is still at large; promise broken.
    2) The Wall is still a wet dream; promise broken.
    3) Sanctuary cities are still sanctuaries for non-citizen murderers; promise broken. And now,
    4) Obamacare will remain in place; promise broken.

    That show that he gave us in the joint session of Congress, last week turns out to be just a show.

    We might as well have kept Obama. How embarrassed are you for voting Republican, last year?

    wayne,
    To paraphrase Dr. Pepper: I’m a crony, he’s a crony, she’s a crony, we’re a crony! Would you like to be a crony too?

    ken anthony,
    A friend of mine told me that Rush Limbaugh pointed out that in 1999, a family of four could buy health insurance for $145 per month, with a $4,500 deductible (which sounds similar to what I remember), but today it costs $1,400 per month. Ann Coulter may be right about what health insurance should cost without all that central control mucking up the free market.

    However, my image of the Obamacare repeal bill is only one page long. A title and the line: “The PPACA is repealed with extreme prejudice in its entirety.”

    The Convention of the States (Article Five convention) should also include an amendment that abolishes the ability of government to direct us as to how to spend our own money. No spending mandates. Such mandates are only about crony capitalism and are completely against the Constitution’s intent, as stated in the Preamble: to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity“.

    What part of “mandate” does Congress think is a blessing of liberty?

  • pzatchok

    The laws in many ways stand in the way of socialized health care in the US.

    The US government is not allowed to make a company or do a service that a private industry already does.

    Medicaid only exists because the insurance industry would not cover those people at a reasonable price. Which was a good thing.

    As soon as the Democrats decided to force insurance companies to cover everyone they closed the door on Medicaid. They did that to get rid of a failing (nonprofitable) government program they had been complaining about for years.

    If they took all those tax credits and rebates they gave to low income citizens so that they could afford ‘private’ insurance and instead put it toward Medicaid they could have covered just as many if not more and everyone else would have been left alone.

    I have not talked to a single person who wouldn’t have paid 4 times as much medicaid/medicare tax to make sure every low income person was covered. But I have found no one who likes Obama care.

    I will accept nothing that doesn’t take us back to this basic idea.
    Socialized health care should be the last resort, not the only choice.

  • D.K. Williams

    Whatever happened to Ryan’s idea of giving people a voucher and letting them buy the policy they prefer? Works pretty well in Switzerland, although I would require a modest fee per service to keep people from running to the doctor for every little thing.

  • Al

    Both side like Obamacare because it redistributes money. Whenever money is redistributed there are people in the middle that get to take a cut. Corporations win, politicians win but the people get screwed.

  • ken anthony

    What part of “mandate” does Congress think is a blessing of liberty?

    By now Edward, it should be obvious that our ‘leaders’ don’t think. For reason’s that I can’t really fathom, we do not put adults in charge. It seems to me that if we had any adults doing things they could easily deal with the lying media.

    For example: Ben Carson is absolutely right that slaves were immigrants because the term immigrant has nothing to do with the voluntary nature and everything to do with moving to a country. But the media goes into a howling frenzy and no adult seems able to chastise them even by pointing out that Obama also refereed (correctly) to slaves as immigrants as well on multiple occassions.

    We have a minimum age law for president. Perhaps a vocabulary IQ test should be required for all other ‘leaders?’

  • Cotour

    “Promises made, promises broken. Just like Obama himself.”

    They are all politicians that depend on “other” peoples money to continue their career’s. Trump and much of his cabinet are not in this category. This fact has great potential to break this leadership double talk political dilemma.
    Lets wait and see what emerges from the A hole of the Congress after the push back settles down.

    “Both side like Obamacare because it redistributes money.”

    The above sentence is thee key agenda that is being perpetrated here, the redistribution of weath. Just like the mandated minimum wage reaches into the pocket of the small business owner to provide a “living wage” to entry level hamburger flippers and further confiscate THEIR profits because of the social manipulations of the social dependency state agenda. The Liberal Federal Governments social engineering has resulted in this China syndrome of incentive killing illogic and the necessity to confiscate the wealth of its citizens.

    What are the rank and file proforma politicians now pushing for? A special tax on any robot / automation that would replace a worker in these industries.

    Definition of immigrant: One that immigrates: such as a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence a plant or animal that becomes established in an area where it was previously unknown
    immigrant adjective.

    While the word technically may fit Carson’s use, it is a poorly chosen word in the context of a cabinet member of the president of the United States. People brought to another country by brutal force with chains around their necks and ankles are not “immigrants”, they are kidnapped, captives and prisoners. Let us not through ignorance choose to be naive here (read: selectively stupid).

    Unless Carson, just like Obama when he used the same term in a similar context may have used the word on purpose in order to create a controversy. ??????

  • wayne

    Holy cow, I’m still being punished for slavery that happened 150+ years ago.
    Pure manufactured, fake, controversy, to distract us all.

    Trump hand-picked Rence Priebus to be his gatekeeper and Chief of Staff.
    Trump hand picked DeStefano, a Boehner acolyte, to be Head of Personnel, in charge of hiring 3,000+ executive branch employees.
    Trump hand-picked McConnell’s wife to be in the Cabinet.
    Trump claimed Dr. Carson was “pathological” and “incurable.”
    [Carson is an incurable “pathological.”
    https://youtu.be/MnPCrPj90NM
    –Was Trump lying then or is he lying now?]

    Trump loves Tillerson– who loves carbon-taxes and believes in global warming.
    Anyone heard from Thad Cochran recently?– he doesn’t even remember his own name or what day it is.

  • Cotour

    The key word in my comment is the word “Context”. The word immigrant in the context of Carson’s speech is inappropriate. Slavery is not equatable to “immigration”. How are you being punished for slavery? Drama? Libertarian, idealistic Drama?

    Trumps choices are a result of actually being able to operate at some level within Washington at a particular time, are they ideal as per you? No. So what?

    You, and many others are believers in the “perfect” solution, here is some news for you, it does not exist. What does exist is the will of an individual who is at the center of it all and their ability to keep things together and moving into the future with some assembalance of order and purpose. Trump is the individual, unique disruption that Washington and America is desperately in need of, you are just confused by the disruption.

    Take a chill pill, its going to get crazier.

  • wodun

    McConnell, Ryan, and Chief of Staff Priebus, are all progressive statists

    This is the problem. They fell for the trap that there must be a government program to replace Obamacare. They like the idea of a government program because it gives them control but the problem is that the healthcare market can’t be controlled. The future is uncertain and congress is incapable of planning it.

    The only type of government program I would be happy with is one that enables citizens to take care of themselves. HSA’s are great but they need to have their caps removed. And if the government were to require a deduction from your paycheck that goes directly into your own HSA, I would be OK with it.

    Then remove all of the bureaucratic regulations on what health insurance has to cover and reporting requirements for providers. Regulations should be for fraud prevention not to dictate how/what care is provided.

    Pre-existing conditions could be dealt with by having a waiting period so that people couldn’t just get a policy when they break a leg, then dump it. This means people with chronic health conditions could still get coverage. Also, keeping kids under 26 on a plan is a ruse. Its billed out like its a separate policy, it’s not free. Anyone can pay for someone else’s insurance if they want.

  • pzatchok

    I get the idea that a lot of people are forgetting a few people in our population.

    The homeless and ridiculously stupid.

    The homeless are also going to be covered . So they have to be included in this system. They will NEVER take a voucher and use it to buy insurance.

    And do you really think the life time welfare recipients are going to be able to handle their own insurance? No, they cannot even handle their own life.

    What about the insane? Drug addicts? Mentally retarded?

    Neighborhood clinics will have to be established to stop people from abusing Hospitals.

    Private insurance in a privilege, a benefit, a reward. Either earned through your employer or paid for by yourself.
    Basic cheap healthcare will have to be government provided or privately paid for out of pocket.
    I can not see any need or reason for a single dime of government vouchers or taxes to go to a private insurance company just so 1% of it could be paid to a doctor for my flue shot.

    What insurance system to veterans go through for their healthcare? None.
    Why should the rest of the citizens have to go through some insurance company just for cheap basic healthcare? They don’t its just so the insurance company can make a buck off of tax money.

    If you want special service, a private room and your choice of doctors get private insurance.
    If you cannot afford that you get nurse Ratchet and her smokers breath giving you impersonal flu shots and prostate exams in a clinic. You get to wait a few months for an MRI. You get your broken leg set, cast and you get sent home but you don’t get 3 months of physical therapy after.

    We will eventually set up something equivalent to the Veterans healthcare system for everyone.

    Lets use that system as a starting point and example.

  • pzatchok

    By instituting a system like this we will also be getting rid of Medicare since the elderly will already be covered by the new system.

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