Republicans Don't Want to Deal With Healthcare

[Zippyjuan]

Trump had promised "repeal and replace" for Obamacare. That failed. He recently proclaimed that Republicans would be the "party of healthcare". But they don't want to be. Trump still promises a new amazing plan (which does not yet exist) but won't be until at least after the next election. It was supposed to be the first goal before tax reform. In past interviews, Trump has said he wants to cover everybody. "I don't care what that will cost me."

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/08/trump-health-care-republican-brain-trust-1259707


Although the president walked back his promise for an Obamacare replacement ahead of 2020, lawmakers can neither escape the issue or muster a strong response.

President Donald Trump promised a new plan to replace Obamacare. But the four Senate Republicans he tapped for the job aren’t jumping at the opportunity.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) says any new plan has to come from the White House — and that he had no warning Trump planned to make him part of the health policy group. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) won't say more than he and colleagues are “working on health care thoughts.” John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), when asked about the Republican plan, turned the question back on the opposition, saying, “Democrats want to go to the complete government takeover of health care.”

And Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the fourth member of Trump’s team, hasn’t committed to anything more than “conversations with colleagues” about health care affordability.

It's clear that a week into the Trump-mandated makeover as the “Party of Health Care,” few lawmakers want ownership of an issue proven toxic to Republicans’ political futures. The GOP has been deadlocked on a replacement since its high-profile repeal effort collapsed in the fall of 2017. That’s left the party paralyzed — reluctant to contradict Trump but scared of entering another campaign cycle without a coherent health care message. Those most qualified to craft a plan have no interest in the job, while others eager for another repeal effort aren’t gaining traction.

Barrasso, the No. 3 Senate Republican, has spoken regularly with the White House over the last week. But there’s no indication those discussions produced anything beyond the realization it’s easier to shift the focus to Democrats.

Barrasso said a GOP plan would include ensuring people can “buy insurance that works for them and their families and is affordable.”

Such platitudes — set against Trump’s confident vows that the GOP would indeed replace Obamacare with a “really great“ plan in 2020 — have only accentuated the yawning gap between the White House and Hill Republicans on an issue that seems primed to burn the party again.

“This is going to be part of the campaign, part of the debate,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a top Senate Republican up for reelection next year. “Whether anybody likes it or not.”

Across the Capitol, there’s slightly more enthusiasm but even less consensus on where to start.

“There’s an appetite to get some working groups together to start coming up with some policy positions,” said Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), who characterized the GOP as in the “digest, listen and compile ideas” phase.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said he and other conservative lawmakers are workshopping their own ideas, but he noted they “will be more conceptual than actual legislative text.”

[Anti Federalist]

Obamacare’s Unhappy Anniversary

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/04/08/obamacares-unhappy-anniversary/

Guest Post by Ron Paul

Last month marked nine years since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (popularly known as Obamacare) became law. Obamacare’s proponents promised that the law would reduce costs, expand access, and allow us to keep our doctors if we liked our doctors. The reality has been quite different.

Since Obamacare was enacted, individual health insurance premiums have more than doubled while small businesses have been discouraged from providing health insurance benefits. The increased costs of, and decreased access to, health care are a direct result of Obamacare’s mandates — particularly the guaranteed issue and pre-existing condition mandates. Another costly mandate forces most plans to cover “essential health benefits.” This mandate is why postmenopausal women must pay for contraceptive coverage.

The increase in health insurance premiums has not helped those who like their doctors keep their doctors. Instead, patients’ choices of providers are restricted to ever-narrower networks. As leading health care scholar John C. Goodman observed, the result is that a cancer patient from my hometown of Lake Jackson, Texas who obtains insurance through Obamacare’s exchanges cannot get treatment at nearby MD Anderson, one of the country’s top cancer treatment centers. If health care were a true free market, insurance companies would compete for the business of cancer patients and others with chronic conditions by developing innovative ways to give them the best care at an affordable price.

Sadly, few in Congress support free-market health care. The Democrats are divided between progressives who want to repeal and replace Obamacare with “Medicare for all,” the latest euphemism for single-payer healthcare, and establishment Democrats who want to save Obamacare by spending more money on subsidies for individuals and insurance companies.

President Trump has made some regulatory changes that make it easier for individuals to find affordable insurance. He has also recently called on Republicans to renew efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. Most Republicans reacted to the president’s call the way Dracula reacts to a crucifix. These Republicans are terrified of the issue because they believe their half-hearted attempts to enact phony repeal bills cost them control of the House of Representatives in 2018.

President Trump himself does not actually want to repeal all of Obamacare. He just wants to repeal the “unpopular” parts. However, because the popular parts include many of Obamacare’s most destructive mandates, even if President Trump gets his way, Americans will continue to suffer with low-qualify, high-cost health care.

Any system combing subsidies that artificially increase demand with regulations and mandates that, by raising costs, artificially limit supply inevitably results in shortages, rationing, and lower quality. Therefore, no matter how much Democrats spend or how many “reforms” Republicans enact, Obamacare and other types of government-controlled health care will never “work.”

Instead of ignoring the issue, trying to prop up Obamacare, or implementing a single-payer plan, Congress should restore individuals’ control over health care dollars by expanding health care tax deductions and credits, as well as Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Expanded charitable deductions could help ensure those who need assistance can obtain privately-funded charitable care instead of relying on inefficient government programs. Before Medicaid and Medicare, doctors routinely provided charitable care, while churches and private charities ran hospitals that served the poor. Individuals are more than capable of meeting their health care needs, and providing for the needs of the less fortunate, if the government gets out of the way.

[oyarde]

Dems have the house . Any health care problems start and stop with Obama & Pelosi as far as anyone is concerned . Next .

[Dr.3D]

The government shouldn't be involved with healthcare in the first place.

Anything the government get's it's fingers into, always ends up costing more.

[Zippyjuan]

Dems have the house . Any health care problems start and stop with Obama & Pelosi as far as anyone is concerned . Next .

IT is the other guy's fault. We aren't even going to try to do anything.

[Anti Globalist]

Get the government out of healthcare.

[Swordsmyth]

I will be quite happy if SCOTUS declares it unconstitutional and Congress doesn't do anything, we don't have a Congress that I would trust to do anything and going back to before O'Bummercare will be an improvement.

[oyarde]

IT is the other guy's fault. We aren't even going to try to do anything.

Anything the govt does will be bad most likely if the house agrees to it . One thing they could do is open up competition but they do not have donors for that they have donors for what you got last time .

[Stratovarious]

''Republicans Don't Want to Deal With Healthcare ''
Good
Good , Politicians and government have no business running health care, it was one
HELL OF A LOT BETTER BEFORE OBAMA decided they should take it over.

[Stratovarious]

... We aren't even going to try to do anything.
Good

Again


Bravo

[Zippyjuan]

Good

Again


Bravo

Status quo is a good thing, then?

[Swordsmyth]

Status quo is a good thing, then?

Better than what they might do, especially when SCOTUS declares O'Bummercare unconstitutional.

[oyarde]

Status quo is a good thing, then?

Anyone who is unhappy should come around when all the reduced costs that Obama talked about kick in , should be any time now .

[Pauls' Revere]

The government shouldn't be involved with healthcare in the first place.

Anything the government get's it's fingers into, always ends up costing more.

+rep

[Stratovarious]

Status quo is a good thing, then?

Govt needs to get out of Health Care.

[Superfluous Man]

Status quo is a good thing, then?

That is basically the defining mantra of conservatism in every generation.

I used to think there was a basic ideological difference between conservative and liberal, where conservatives supposedly wanted smaller government. But that has never been true. For conservatives small government has never been anything but a pretext for opposing some change in the direction of bigger government, one that they could freely cast aside any time they themselves wanted to have more government or to stop an attempt at shrinking it.

In reality, conservatives are exactly what their name implies, protectors of the status quo. Yesteryear's conservatives battled against some (though by no means all) of the proposals for new big government programs of their generation and lost those battles. And as a result, today's conservatives now embrace those same programs and run on promises to preserve them, while they oppose some other big change the other side proposes. Take all the criticisms of Obamacare that were used back when it hadn't gotten passed yet about how it was even worse than the more socialist healthcare systems of many other nations and throw those criticisms away now. Now that it's the status quo, for conservatives, it is better than those, and conservatives are duty bound to protect it and oppose replacing it with anything resembling them.

Now, where this is going to get interesting is in Trump's 2020 campaign, depending on what specific replacement proposal he puts forth. It's possible that he'll go all the way to reelection without getting specific, or by proposing multiple different mutually contradictory things. But if so, then at some point, there will have to be an actual bill to vote on, and specifics will come out one way or another. And "conservatives" will then be torn between opposing duties, the one to protect their status quo against whatever big-government replacement Trump proposes, and the other to loyally follow him and support it just because he does. The past 3 years have already shown that his ability to mesmerize his supporters and demand their unquestioning loyalty exceeds what I would have previously thought possible.

[oyarde]

Govt needs to get out of Health Care.

Everyone knows that . Those who pretend otherwise expect to get pd .

[donnay]

The government shouldn't be involved with healthcare in the first place.

Anything the government get's it's fingers into, always ends up costing more.

Exactly! Costing more monetarily and more in taking away our Liberty!

Socialized medicine is so great, eh? ...Mick Jagger came to the US to get heart surgery. Think about that for just a moment.

[Peace Piper]

Trump had promised "repeal and replace" for Obamacare. That failed. He recently proclaimed that Republicans would be the "party of healthcare". But they don't want to be. Trump still promises a new amazing plan (which does not yet exist) but won't be until at least after the next election. It was supposed to be the first goal before tax reform. In past interviews, Trump has said he wants to cover everybody. "I don't care what that will cost me."


1. Obamacare was a Heritage Foundation plan.

Why would "Republicans" repeal something that they created?

(Many here still don't understand the Heritage connection, because their minds simply can't handle it)

Fox News: Individual health care insurance mandate has roots two decades long (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/individual-health-care-insurance-mandate-has-roots-two-decades-long)


The health insurance mandate in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is an idea hatched in 1989 by Stuart Butler at Heritage in a publication titled "Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans". This was also the model for Mitt Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts LINK
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation#Policy_influence)

Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans

The Heritage Foundation 10/1989 Stuart M. Butler

5-2: Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance. Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seatbelts for their own protection. Many others require anybody driving a car to have li a bility insurance. But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement. full artricle: https://www.heritage.org/social-security/report/assuring-affordable-health-care-all-americans


Remember that we were all instructed to vote for Mitt Romney by Rand Paul


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c5odNzKVbk

2. "Republicans" Controlled all 3 branches of Government for the last 2 years

yet nothing could be done about this Republican created nightmare.

If that doesn't tell you you've all been suckered by two-bit con men nothing will

https://cdn3.volusion.com/xtyhf.kmcua/v/vspfiles/photos/BLOPOP-2.jpg?1445677747