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Republicans consider delaying Obamacare repeal

Failure theater: The Republican leadership is considering a whole range of delays in their so-called effort to repeal Obamacare.

Republicans are debating how long to delay implementing the repeal. Aides involved in the deliberations said some parts of the law may be ended quickly, such as its regulations affecting insurer health plans and businesses. Other pieces may be maintained for up to three or four years, such as insurance subsidies and the Medicaid expansion. Some parts of the law may never be repealed, such as the provision letting people under age 26 remain on a parent’s plan.

House conservatives want a two-year fuse for the repeal. Republican leaders prefer at least three years, and there has been discussion of putting it off until after the 2020 elections, staffers said.

When are these idiots finally going to realize that the voters who put them in office are not Democratic liberals, and specifically want Obamacare repealed, now?

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

7 comments

  • LocalFluff

    Obamacare is so failed that even Hillary Clinton campaigned to get rid of it. Any republicans hindering its repeal will become very popular and re-elected, I’m sure.

  • Jake V

    No one would be surprised if Republicans do not repeal Obamacare, or repeal it in a way that leaves it in place. Republicans have had 6 years to announce a plan and seem incapable of doing so.

    The hope now is that Trump uses his bully pulpit as President and forces the issue.

    I’d be happy if it (and all the related regulations) are simply repealed and then let the free market work. I’d also be happy if that did that plus provided tax deductions and subsidies for those who need them.

  • Edward

    No replacement is necessary.

    Obamacare was supposed to put an end to the need to choose between getting expensive medical care and selling our houses/going bankrupt. But all it ended up doing was making the insurance less and less affordable, making the medical care unaffordable until the insurance kicks in over the deductible, and making even the healthy among us choose between selling our houses to pay for the insurance or filing bankruptcy to avoid paying the exorbitant scofflaw fine — er — tax penalty.

    Oh, that’s right. Bankruptcy does not get us out of the requirement of paying taxes.

    Worse, we are now required by law to purchase the insurance whether we need it or not, whether we want it or not, or whether it will bankrupt us or not. A growing number of us now must choose between buying insurance and eating/paying rent. As for me, I have chosen to become a scofflaw in order to continue living my life in healthy, nutritious, dry comfort.

    To be sure, there seem to be more people insured now than before, but with such tremendously high deductibles, few of us reach the deductible limit, thus the expensive insurance is actually worse than worthless.

    Making healthcare into a free-market system, once again, would go a long, long way toward making it affordable, as it was three decades ago.

    Sure, the major stuff could seem expensive, back then, but at least we had choices and significantly lower costs. Only recently did we discover just how expensive “expensive” could really get!

    With the freedom to choose, it makes the doctors and hospitals actually compete for the services, quality, technology, and prices offered, and it makes the insurance companies compete for the same.

    This government-issued healthcare system is far, far worse than the problem it was supposed to solve. Over the decades, every time government messed with healthcare, they only made it worse and even more expensive and unaffordable.

    They may (or may not) have had good intentions, but they set us on the road to hell, and we seem to have arrived (perhaps it was a trick of the devil — sold our soles for mandatory insurance). We entered Obamacare and abandoned all hope — except for the hope of total repeal, quickly.

    Thus not replacing it is a better solution than mucking the system up even more than it has already been mucked up by the uncaring, greedy, megalomaniac central government.

  • Max

    The house and senate has already voted to repeal Obamacare. Obama refused to sign into law. Perhaps someone could change the date on the bill and take it to trump for signature then dare the Congress not to support it?
    Trump loves drama and this would feed the news cycle… And expose the rhinos in the way of his manifest destiny.

  • wayne

    Max–
    That’s not exactly what happened, or how our system actually works.

    For a Bill to be presented to the President and became Law, the House & Senate must pass identical legislation and send it to the President for signature.

    The House did some show-votes, but those Bills never made it out of the House and the Senate never addressed any of them nor passed identical legislation, nor presented any such repeal bills to the President.

    This is what is so disingenuous about our current crop of Republicans.
    They actively funded all this stuff at every single opportunity, while simultaneously claiming they opposed it all.
    (When Ted Cruz called Mitch a liar about all this stuff– He was mercilessly attacked by his own party, headed by RINO’s.)

    DJT is no Conservative, and he’s barely a Republican (in name only).
    He doesn’t oppose RINO’s, he see’s them as allies, hence we now have Rinse Prius (RINO) as chief-of-staff, and Mitch (RINO) McConnell’s wife in the future cabinet.

    And now, they can’t wait to be in charge & borrow a trillion (more) dollars and blow it all on phony “infrastructure” junk.

  • Wayne: You are incorrect on one point. Last year an Obamacare repeal bill was passed by both houses of Congress and did make it Obama’s desk, where he vetoed it. Max’s idea of taking that same bill and having Trump sign it, as a stunt, is actually a good idea. It would not become law, but it would showcase the failure theatrics of the Republican leadership now, who suddenly can’t pass the same law when they have complete control over the situation.

  • wayne

    Ooops.
    I stand corrected and acknowledge Max knows what he’s talking about!
    Mitch and the Senate, could then have attempted an override vote, but they didn’t push it.

    I do like the “failure theatrics” tag.
    First they (Republicans) claimed they were “only 1/2 of 1/3 of the government,” so we gave them the House.
    Then they claimed “the House is only 1/3 of the Government,” and they couldn’t do anything unless they had the Senate, so we gave them the Senate.
    >They still fiddled while Rome burned to ash.
    Then they said, “give us the Presidency and the ACA will be gone, we promise.”
    –My prediction– a year from today, we will still have the ACA.
    If they don’t kill the must-carry & community rating stuff, immediately, they will never, ever get rid of it.
    –We are going to see exactly how much all these people actually believe in a free-market for healthcare and for health-insurance. I’m betting it’s “very little.”

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