The TrumpCare comes back from the dead (...and lives!) thread

[Virginiá]

You guys have your own Jimmy Carter now. A president with same party control of the House and Senate yet somehow unable to govern.

Do you mean just general unified control or? I'd like to think Republicans could have passed at least their reconciliation repeal version if they had majorities like Democrats did in 1977-1979. At least in the House, anyway.

Not to say that comparison isn't perfectly suitable overall. Trump, with the addition of Ryan and a generally unpopular agenda is a perfect recipe for dysfunction.

[Virginiá]

Get it through the house, let the moderates do what they want with it in joint committees, and be done with it.

I just don't understand why, if it has little chance of passing the Senate, does the House GOP want to have its members on record voting for a major healthcare reform package that the public hates (including many Republican voters)? What does this accomplish? Are GOP leaders hoping that the ability to go to their voters and say they tried will outweigh the fact that they voted on a bill that would boot millions off their insurance and effectively get rid of a number of provisions people actually liked? That seems a little misguided imo, but whatevs I guess.

[Virginiá]

Am I missing something? This doesn't look even close to passing to me. Why does everybody suddenly assume it's a done deal?

I guess because, at least in theory, Republicans technically have the numbers to make it work, if leadership could strong-arm their caucus into doing it anyhow. That alone is pretty scary, but like you said, in reality this has little chance of passing. It's why it perplexes me why the House GOP is trying to so hard to pass a bill that will only put their members on record as voting for a bill the country hates. It's political suicide, yet somehow they've convinced themselves it's not.

Without some sort of miracle, this will never get past the Senate, at least with it's current makeup. They are smart enough to understand the blowback they will receive from kicking millions off Medicaid + other insurance plans.

[Virginiá]

How happy are Republicans going to be when vulnerable House incumbents' votes are used against them in 2018? After this goes down burning in the Senate (at least in its current form)

Winning right?

Also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/house-democrats-sing-goodbye-to-republicans-as-health-care-bill-passes/2017/05/04/6278208a-30f7-11e7-a335-fa0ae1940305_video.html

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[Virginiá]

Will Senate make a completely new, "moderate" bill with ok CBO-score that they will send back to house? Why would house vote for it? Is it realistic?

What would be a 'moderate' GOP healthcare reform bill even look like at this point? A big part of the reason their 'reform' ideas are awful is because Democrats already took the best ideas from conservatives and put them into the ACA. Whether or not Republicans want to admit it, ObamaCare is their type of reform (although ideally I'm sure conservatives would prefer no reform at all). Everything else they've proposed is either marginal changes or straight up extremist garbage.

[Virginiá]

What states are these people leaving?

I wonder if it has anything to do with this, even if just marginally:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Redoubt

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[Virginiá]

HHS Chief Insists Cutting Nearly $1 Billion From Medicaid Will Help Patients

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/05/07/hhs_chief_tom_price_insists_cutting_nearly_1_billion_from_medicaid_will.html

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I'd like to see them make Medicaid more efficient without first slashing the budget, because what I see instead is a proposal to take money away from Medicaid with promises that they'll put the remaining money to better use, only to inevitably fail to run things more efficiently, and perhaps even waste more money with ideas that don't work.

Just like trickle down - give the wealthy more tax cuts and eventually everyone will benefit! Let us take money dedicated to helping poor and disabled people, give it to the wealthy, and magically patients will get better care! How long are these fairy tales going to go on for?

[Virginiá]

So sad that we have Senators who are fine with big cuts to programs like Medicaid (which actually help millions of people) to (allegedly) reduce the debt, only to take the saved money and funnel it into tax cuts for people/organizations that do not need it. The result is that people who actually need help aren't helped, and not only is the debt not positively impacted, but probably goes up even faster due to the implementation of failed economic ideas under the guise of trying to enable faster growth.

Oh well. In the end, it is Republicans, not Democrats, who will have to explain to voters why they gave away their Medicaid funding just to put billions of dollars into the pockets of people who need it least of anyone.

[Virginiá]

At this point, if Republicans want to give away their majorities over a awful healthcare bill that will strip the coverage or raise the premiums of tens of millions of people, then that is on them. They will have to suffer through a backlash and in the end, they just make it easier for Democrats to enact more substantial reforms that people actually want.

[Virginiá]

Lowlife McConnell won't even meet with patient advocacy groups who are basically begging him not to pass this bill:

I suppose he doesn't want to give them or anyone else any leg to stand on in criticizing the bill, and he probably figures it is a waste of time since he knows he won't consider what they ask. Republicans are diligently doing their work representing their constituents, except that their constituents in this case are mostly wealthy people and various corporations.

I think we've lost the point that the Senate is in fact still writing its own bill rather than ramming through the House AHCA. Even though both versions are or will be unbelievably underhanded and cruel, any differences will have to be voted on in the House again.

It still makes me nervous. First I didn't think they could possibly agree on anything in the House, then I thought certain things would definitely be off the table in the Senate (such as Medicaid expansion), but now a slow phaseout, by some reports, actually does seem possible. It's very scary, and we are creeping closer to some sort of destructive bill being passed.

[Virginiá]

People don't want single-payer though. Perhaps the polls show that they are in favor but I doubt most Americans know what single-payer would mean. Once the Democrats actually try something like single-payer all hell will break loose and the backlash will be much worse than Obamacare. There are many people without healthcare in the US (which is terrible) but there also are many middle-class people with decent coverage, and they really don't want the government to touch their healthcare (even though some of their fears may be ungrounded). And look at what happened with the single-payer proposal in Colorado. Healthcare reform just is extremely difficult and whichever side tries to do it basically is doomed to lose a lot of seats.

You don't have to nationalize healthcare or take away the idea of private insurance. I'd be fine with a public option, although some peoples idea of a viable public option isn't the same as mine, but I digress.

Part of the problem with Obama doing PPACA when he did was that a huge part of the electorate is/was still primed against dramatic (perceived or not) expansions of social programs. As it so happened, older voters who still embraced the Reagan era broke from Obama and Democrats quite rapidly. I suspect once most of these voters are gone, there won't be quite the same potential for a backlash. This is why I was talking about the GOP further ruining healthcare in this country - they are just priming the electorate to accept broad change. It's difficult to switch to such a system when people are largely satisfied, but when people are losing healthcare left and right and others' premiums are skyrocketing, it becomes a lot easier.

I suspect America will never get to the kind of system I truly want, but subsidies are just not going to cut it for people in the long run. Especially as conservative ideas continue to ignore the price gouging of the healthcare industry.

[Virginiá]

Apparently, Congresses bill is even more harsh than the House bill. Congresses bill pretty much totally kills Medicaid. Medicaid will be even more barebones than it was pre-Obamacare.

I wonder why they think this will pay off somehow. Gutting Medicaid and causing millions to lose healthcare could easily cause Republicans to lose Congress fully by 2020, at which point Democrats can just reinstate what was taken away, and probably add a lot more.

There is really no way stripping the safety net so they can help fund tax cuts for the wealthy is going to play well the public. It never has.

[Virginiá]

Okay. That's it. They actively hate the American people. If Democratic gains in 2018 don't at least equal Democratic gains in 1932 then there's no hope for this place and the cause of freedom will just have to start over again somewhere else.

To be fair, those gains were monstrous (Almost 100 House seat gains, >300 majority), and it happened after the recession had been going on for a while.

Compare to now, with what looks like a drawn out timetable for Medicaid defunding. They are purposefully structuring this so the funding runs out under what I assume they believe will be a Democratic presidency. They are trying to make sure the blame falls on Democrats. I'd expect huge gains if millions lose insurance by the 2018 elections, but if it takes longer, it probably won't be as bad. Bad, but not monstrous.

A slow defunding process like that is why I think Democrats will use the first chance they get to restore funding/fix everything - they'd have to be insane not to. Whichever party holds the White House when the poo hits the fan is going to pay dearly.

[Virginiá]

Trumpy being silent is the biggest tell the Senate GOP isn't planning to care about the AHCA. The power of the presidential pulpit is needed to sell the bill to the public if it became law. That's how it works. Trump isn't even messaging about it even on a cursory basis. He's let the opposition consume the air waves and all the talk to define the ACA and the AHCA this year.

Is it possible they are just using the Trump-Russia scandal as cover? They are doing all their work in secret, and the scandals are allowing that to happen without as much of a fuss as there normally might be.

I'm just wondering if Senate passage would be enough to get attention on it, and if the House could actually agree on something. Or is the point that Mitch won't let the bill pass, even if it could?