And now, John Boehner says ObamaCare will stay the law of the land. I'm in complete agreement. There will be mild modifications, probably requested by the governors, but the Medicare expansion is here to stay, so are the exchanges, and so are the subsidies (guess who they go to? That's right, a lot of Trump voters!). Big Pharma and all the people who benefit will stand on the tracks to stop the repeal.
I imagine the Trump base will move on swiftly to other issues and the GOP will gain collective amnesia that they ever wanted to repeal the law. In five years, it will be remembered as the "Affordable Care Act," not "ObamaCare."
Obama's victory on his healthcare law is breathtaking. He rolled the dice and it looks like he's won the game after all. And it looks like ObamaCare will be the transition point between our prior system and single payer. (Or as they will call it, "Medicare for All.")
The RNC really fumbled badly on not using the 5 years to come up with a replacement plan.
I'm not seeing how Obamacare will be replaced by single-payer if Republicans end up repairing (instead of repealing) it. If it's running like a well-oiled machine by the time 2020 rolls around, there will be very little incentive to take the next step and institute single-payer. And -apart from some left-wing activists- why would we? Why change that which is no longer broken? Unless you are proposing it will be done by stealth, step-by-step, without anyone noticing.
The real next battleground is instituting the public option, which most analysts (CBO, OMB, plenty of private sector and academic experts) agree would help bigly in slowing costs.
Imo the democrats should make a big show of requesting trump put through a public option and drop Medicare to 55 (like make it televised as possible, try and get big protests organised, maybe some round the clock filibusters). If POtUS refuses, he loses populist cred and democrats gain a bit from their perceived obsession with identity politics. If he accepts but is beaten by congress slash his own admin, he looks like an incompetent tool and the GoP loses favour amongst swing voters. In the unlikely event it pushes through, Democrats look like they were powerful and cohesive and controlled the agenda.
Basically my thoughts are that shifting the issues away from immigration and security to healthcare and more socioeconomic issues very much hurts the GOP, especially the curious trump coalition.
