quote:

Originally posted by chellim1: They don't want free-market competition, they want to subsidize and protect their client insurance companies from competition. Many Republicans want the same thing. If they don't protect the insurance companies from competition, the lobbyist money stops flowing to the politicians.

I'd say that is the bottom line. Seriously, why would anyone trying to "fix" healthcare reimbursement oppose the formation of purchasing pools across state lines other than the insurance companies trying to maximize profits?

Health insurance (even pre-ACA) was never a free market any more than major utilities, airlines, etc.

Indeed.

I'm OK with the concept of insurance, but despise most of the reality and industry. That they - the insurance industry - are working against us here in this warrants tar+feathers, or worse. Crazy-greedy, anti-free-market, anti-American cockholsters is what they're being.

This is but one reason any half-assed edit of ObamaCare cannot be allowed to happen. To both take ownership and then to become the guilty party who allows/causes this travesty to happen is too much, and not even in the same universe as conservatism of any sort.

Pools, buying across state lines, other reforms - those are acceptable solutions that actually have positive effects and are legal, reasonable, and conservative. The rest is bullshit... it effectively HAS to be fully repealed and started over to ever accomplish such changes.

But that seems unlikely.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

And, once Zerocare is gone, I bet dollars to donuts the Dems will come around and want to work to shape the replacement.

Exactly.
They have Zero incentive to do anything but preserve the "signature legislation" of their last President, it possible, but if that is repealed they will want to work to shape the replacement.

But that's not necessarily a good thing. They don't want free-market competition, they want to subsidize and protect their client insurance companies from competition. Many Republicans want the same thing. If they don't protect the insurance companies from competition, the lobbyist money stops flowing to the politicians.

No, they're not suddenly going to triple their IQ and give up on their 'big government' delusions. But, for a long-term approach we need either 1) government out of health care completely or 2) some skin in the game from both sides.

Since 1 isn't going to happen, it would be nice to have something where each party doesn't take undoing it as their main focus. Any 'solution' without at least a few votes from the other side will just invite a Democratic 'repeal' position and endless media harping on any imperfections.

This cycle, there are, what, 23 Dem Senators up for election, quite a few of which are from 'Trump states'. If there is going to be any hope of 'bipartisanship' to solidify the approach so we don't keep alternating from 'Obamacare' to 'Trumpcare' to 'Whoevercare" incessantly whenever the power shifts, now is the time.

Cowardly Republicans Must Stop Fearing the Filibuster

Republican leaders and their water carriers want you to think the filibuster is an immovable object blocking conservative legislation. But that’s not true, neither historically nor politically. Beating the filibuster just takes guts and a desire to win.

The filibuster, as designed and implemented, is not a minority veto on legislation. It is merely a delaying tactic. A filibuster can only prevent the passage of a bill when the leadership consents to that. That is, only if the majority leader caves to the filibustering Senators will the filibuster veto, rather than delay, a bill.

Majority leaders rarely wish to look like they’re caving, so they put in a rule to allow themselves to give in without looking like it. This is called the “two-track” system, whereby a majority leader can set aside the filibustered bill and bring another bill up for a vote instead. Since the two track system was implemented, the use of the filibuster has grown as the minority has taken advantage of that displayed weakness.

When Democrat Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 24 hours in 1957, or when Republican Ted Cruz filibustered a continuing resolution for 21 hours in 2013, those filibusters did not veto their targeted bills. The filibuster worked as intended: the speakers were able to delay, gain attention, and give the public an opportunity to side for or against the bill. The minority had a chance to win the debate by throwing a road block in front of the leadership.

That’s what the filibuster is good for, and what it’s meant for. Mitch McConnell and the Republicans can bring the filibuster back to that simply by ending use of the two-track system. Tell the Democrats that they can get up and speak, and filibuster any bill, but that as long as they do that, then they are blocking all the business of the Senate. Let them shut down the government in order to filibuster. Make them be the heavies.

The Democrats won’t have the stomach to shut down the government indefinitely. They have less nerve for that than Republicans do, even, because their unionized patrons cannot tolerate it. They need government funneling cash into the coffers of the unions that donate to their campaigns, and when government employees get disgruntled, that threatens their funding.

Take a stand for once in your miserable careers, Senate Republican leaders. Repeal Obamacare, root and branch, like you promised. Be men of your words, or be proven as useless liars.

http://www.redstate.com/neil_s...-fearing-filibuster/

July 23, 2017
Those of us who had decent health care in 2009 have been ripped off

In 2009, the healthcare system was working reasonably well for around 85% of us. Instead of trying to address the problems of those that weren't covered, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the American Medical Association, hospitals, and insurance companies chose to rework the system for all of us.
They wrote a 2,000-plus-page law with over 10,000 pages of regulations and 20 new taxes. On order to pass the bill they continually lied to the people that if they liked their plan and doctor they could keep them and it would lower premiums. They knew this wasn't true because they dictated exactly what had to be in the policies to please the government. The CBO dutifully estimated that 26 million would be covered by 2016 and that the 10 year cost would be less than $1 trillion. Within three years, the estimate was over $2 trillion and only 11 million were covered. The government bribed the states with 100% coverage of Medicaid expansion for awhile.The media gladly repeated the lies about Obamacare and supported it every step of the way

Now that costs have exploded, choice has been taken away, Medicaid costs are uncontrollable and the exchanges are collapsing, Durbin and the others say 'don't repeal.' They blame Republicans for the collapse and repeat Congressional Budge Office numbers as gospel. And again, the media just repeats Democrats' talking points and CBO numbers with no questions asked.

It is sure hard to stop entitlements when they start because there are always victims. It is no wonder we are broke because once a program starts, no matter how it performs, it is always expanded and anyone who wants to stop, change or control it is ripped to ribbons as mean-spirited. We are greatly harming our children (that Democrats always pretend they care about) with massive debt.

We need our freedom back.

http://www.americanthinker.com...been_ripped_off.html

The libs/leftist/God Damned Commies did the same thing to residential finance, bankrupting Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and dozens of banks, and ruining untold millions of families, which had to be absorbed at enormous cost or face political disaster.

On Friday night, Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, made damn sure that defunding of Planned Parenthood will not be part of the Senate health care bill, citing the Byrd rule to stipulate that the key provisions violated Senate rules.

It is now clear the Senate’s version of a new health care bill will not defund Planned Parenthood, as it would require 60 votes in the Senate to implement such an action.

http://www.dailywire.com/news/...-blocks-hank-berrien

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
People talking about obamacare repeal act like it is mind numbingly complicated. Most of it is straight forward.

http://www.nationalreview.com/...idual-mandate-repeal

"Thanks to information that was leaked to me by a congressional staffer"

"Nearly three-fourths of the difference in coverage between Obamacare and the various GOP plans derives from a single feature of the Republican bills: their repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate"

CBO says 16 million will voluntarily drop out of the market because they no longer face a penalty.

REPs need to keep pounding this. Repealing obamacare doesn't take your insurance away if you decide to not get insured.

GOP moderates, in particular, have been intimidated by the CBO coverage scores, expressing reluctance to vote for a plan that “takes coverage away” from so many. But if the only reason you’ve stopped buying insurance is because the government is no longer fining you for doing so, nobody has “taken away” your coverage. It’s time for those moderates to choose. Do you support Obamacare’s individual mandate? If you do, then no GOP replacement will ever satisfy you. If you oppose the individual mandate, and would vote for its repeal, then you should ignore at least three-fourths of the CBO’s coverage score. The CBO has left us with no middle ground.

July 24, 2017
Have Repeal Efforts Always Been a Republican Ruse?
By William Sullivan

For leading Republicans today, the answer is almost certainly yes. As evidence, allow me to take you back to the fall of 2013.

The House GOP, the chamber majority since 2010, had a choice in deciding the fate of the Continuing Appropriations Resolution for the fiscal year of 2014. They could have simply increased the spending limit and continued funding the government, including Obamacare. However, this strategy presented a problem in terms of political optics. Republicans saw their huge victory in the House in 2010 due to popular opposition to Obamacare -- there can be no legitimate argument about that, and Republicans knew it well. They had to offer at least the perception that they were on the Hill to fight Obamacare tooth and nail. So, what could Republicans do to shield Americans from all of Obamacare’s detrimental machinations, from which Congress had so carefully exempted itself in that year?

Here’s how it played out in 2013. House Republicans first thought to issue two separate bills, one funding the government, and a separate bill to defund Obamacare. This was the path of GOP “compromise,” we were assured. However, it was also little more than preemptive capitulation. The Senate, then with a Democratic majority, could simply pass the bill funding government in its entirety, and ignore the bill to defund Obamacare, as would have been Harry Reid’s prerogative at the time.

Some conservative House members devised a different approach. What if a single bill was crafted which both provided a stopgap allowance to continue funding the government with the exception of Obamacare?

House Speaker John Boehner interestingly opted for the latter, saying that Obamacare was “a train wreck. It’s time to start protecting families from this unworkable law.”

So the House bill passed, and it went to the Senate. Ted Cruz famously spoke for over 20 hours to protest the Senate Democrats’ insistence upon passing a “clean bill” which continued funding Obamacare. Cruz had his allies, including Jeff Sessions, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and David Vitter. However, turncoat Republican Senators John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell undermined Cruz’s efforts by rallying Republicans against him. Knowing that the Senate wouldn’t have the 60 votes to pass a “clean bill,” Cornyn and McConnell pushed for, and voted for, a cloture vote to allow a gutting of the House bill with 51 votes. They then voted against funding Obamacare, but only after it had become a meaningless show vote.

All this opposition to funding Obamacare led to the latest of 17 government shutdowns in American history. Despite all the bluster about how it would prove harmful to Republicans, 2014 was another landslide victory for them – giving them the largest majority in Congress and state legislatures since 1928.

Forward to 2015. Now in command of the House and Senate, Republicans spearheaded and passed a bill to repeal Obamacare. Naturally, Obama vetoed the bill in January of 2016, and Republicans did not have the votes to override the veto.

Later that year, Democrats lost the presidency to candidate Donald Trump, who vocally railed against Obamacare.

The American people, after nearly seven long years of struggle which led to a complete reversal in the balance of power at the federal level, had created the circumstances necessary to eliminate the ever-unpopular Obamacare once and for all, relegating it the annals of immediate history as a failed socialist experiment. Republicans had, after all, proven that they’re driven to repeal Obamacare at all costs, hadn’t they?

But once in power, Republicans didn’t try to repeal Obamacare at all. They tried to “reform” Obamacare. That’s how Daniel Henninger at The Wall Street Journal characterizes the recent efforts of Congress, and it’s apt. He calls it Republicans’ “Obamacare reform failure.”

It’s interesting that I’ve never really thought of it in those terms, which is, I suppose, a testament to the power of media and our political narrative which insists that recent Republican efforts on the Hill have anything at all to do with “repeal.” But it has become very clear that Republicans’ outward desire to “repeal” Obamacare had become Republicans’ outward desire to “reform” Obamacare once they had attained the power to repeal it outright. That is what “repeal and replace” means. It may sound better to the Republican faithful to “repeal and replace” rather than “reforming” the big-government, liberty-strangling monstrosity that is Obamacare, but there is little difference when you’re trading one federal law regulating our healthcare system for another that features an awful lot of the same regulatory strictures on private industry, rather than eliminating the federal regulations which Obamacare introduced altogether.

Now, in the wake of this failure to reform Obamacare, what have we learned?

Henninger writes that, though Republicans had become “self-identifiably conservative” in recent years, we’ve just learned that they’re “not as conservative as they think they are.”

Personally, I don’t believe that Republicans, particularly of the Washington establishment ilk, ever thought of themselves as conservatives. Likelier, they knowingly feigned conservative positions in order to get elected. And they could wear the conservative mask easily when it came to Obamacare, because none of their efforts in the past could ever actually yield the result of repealing it.

When Boehner championed defunding Obamacare in 2013, he knew it would never effect an end to Obamacare. It was a way to express conservative bona fides on the cheap, pandering to the conservative base, leaving now-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (who’s leading the effort to “repeal” Obamacare in the Senate) to do the dirty work of quietly sabotaging the effort. Similarly, in 2015, Republicans in Congress knew that Obama would veto their bill to repeal, and that they wouldn’t have the votes to override the veto.

Maybe, just maybe, all of that was nothing more than a show, meant to get you excited and to get them elected?

After all, if it were not, what would be keeping them from sending that same repeal bill from 2015 to President Trump’s desk with the actual prospect of repeal, knowing that he would sign it?

Republicans can still win this. They can win this because, against all odds, the American people have put the pieces in place necessary to repeal Obamacare outright. Those Republicans who vote against a pure repeal will be cast out as quickly as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who spectacularly lost the Republican primary as a result of his pro-amnesty position in 2014.

And Republicans need to win this, because if they do not, Republicans will own whatever now comes of Obamacare. They will own it because now they have the ability to repeal it, but are refusing to do so in hopes of “reforming” it.

Future legislation, including much needed tax reform, hinges on this. The legacy of Trump and this Republican Congress hinges on this. All they need to do is pass a simple bill to repeal Obamacare, as Republicans promised the American people. Healthcare reform - hopefully free-market reform - can follow thereafter.

http://www.americanthinker.com...republican_ruse.html

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
July 24, 2017
Have Repeal Efforts Always Been a Republican Ruse?
By William Sullivan

.......
The American people, after nearly seven long years of struggle which led to a complete reversal in the balance of power at the federal level, had created the circumstances necessary to eliminate the ever-unpopular Obamacare once and for all, relegating it the annals of immediate history as a failed socialist experiment. Republicans had, after all, proven that they’re driven to repeal Obamacare at all costs, hadn’t they?
......
But once in power, Republicans didn’t try to repeal Obamacare at all. They tried to “reform” Obamacare.
.....
Personally, I don’t believe that Republicans, particularly of the Washington establishment ilk,
.....
Maybe, just maybe, all of that was nothing more than a show, meant to get you excited and to get them elected?
.....
All they need to do is pass a simple bill to repeal Obamacare, as Republicans promised the American people. Healthcare reform - hopefully free-market reform - can follow thereafter.

http://www.americanthinker.com...republican_ruse.html

Way too much reading I simplified it for everyone.

Just do your f#$&ing job! You got elected to do one thing, live up to your promises.

Boehner: Will Never Repeal & Replace Obamacare, "It's Been Around Too Long"



Every entitlement typically creates a constituency that benefits from it and is forever dedicated to its defense... and the longer it exists, the more entrenched (and larger) those defenders become. Simply put, entitlements never get repealed.

That's the message for former House speaker John Boehner, who as The Washington Post reports, told a business gathering last week that Republicans are “not going to repeal and replace Obamacare” because “the American people have gotten accustomed to it.”

According to video footage obtained by The Washington Post...

Boehner told a private crowd in Las Vegas...

“Here we are, seven months into this year, and yet they’ve not passed this bill. Now, they’re never — they’re not going to repeal and replace Obamacare,”



“It’s been around too long. And the American people have gotten accustomed to it. Governors have gotten accustomed to this Medicaid expansion, and so trying to pull it back is really not going to work.”

Boehner said the Republicans’ best hope in the coming months is to peel away aspects of the law, such as some tax provisions and regulations, and to end health insurance mandates.

“When it’s all said and done, you’re not going to have an employer mandate anymore, you’re not going to have the individual mandate,” Boehner said.

“The Medicaid expansion will be there. The governors will have more control over their Medicaid populations and how to get them care, and a lot of Obamacare taxes will probably go.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...been-around-too-long

^^^ No offense, chellim, but I don't see anything there that tells me Boehner has any special insight into what's going to happen. There's certainly no quotes or references to what he's heard lately from those still in office. This sounds more like a bunch of extrapolation based on his own views and what he thinks Congress was like back in his day.

quote:

^^^ No offense, chellim, but I don't see anything there that tells me Boehner has any special insight into what's going to happen.

No offense taken. I only posted to show everyone that Boehner is irrelevant. He's still talking like an elitist, but his self-importance is not important to the rest of us...

He was part of the swamp. We need to drain it of a few more like him.

He's a crybaby. He's embarrassingly weak.

And he's as wrong about this as he's been wrong about a lot of other things.

President DJT is just forcing some of these GOP lackies to pull up their wo/man panties and actually govern.

Some (ok, most) of them have had their knickers down around their ankles for so long it's just going to take a little time for them to find the waistband.

when is the last time Beaner was ever right about anything?

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
when is the last time Beaner was ever right about anything?

When he retired.

The Repeal/Replace bill only got 43 votes.

http://www.politico.com/story/...e-republicans-240926

quote:

Nine conservative and moderate Republicans joined all Democrats on a 43-57 vote that effectively killed the measure Tuesday evening.

Republicans who voted to reject their party's repeal-and-replace plan were Collins, Murkowski, and Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Dean Heller of Nevada, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Mike Lee of Utah.

I said earlier that Repeal Only would be lucky to get 40 votes - we should see soon how that vote goes.

It certainly appears that the disgusting politicians (with very few exceptions) have absolutely no desire to make repeal/replace happen.

The republicans prefer to be the minority party. All the benefits and none of the responsibility. I guess that's why they are dooming themselves for the next few election cycles.