Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Wednesday, February 8, 2017

THE GOP DELUSION: Obamacare will be repealed






Obamacare Repeal Is Failing Because It Was Based on a Lie 



 Last week, Richard Hanna, a Republican from central New York who just retired from Congress, admitted something that almost no member of his party in elected office has been willing to concede in public. “At the end of the day, the Affordable Care Act will in some form survive, and the millions of people who are on it will have insurance,” he said. “It’s something this country needed and something people want. Politically, it’s untenable to just wipe it away. 

So who really won? In my argument, the president, Obama, won. At the end of the day we will have some sort of national health care that’s going to look very similar to what we have.” The mania for destroying the law is faltering because the Republican crusade to kill Obamacare was always based on delusions that are no longer possible to conceal. View image on Twitter

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Republicans suffer from an additional handicap that Democrats did not face in 2010: they are not merely over-promising what they can deliver, they are promising the exact opposite. While GOP rhetoric has lambasted the cost of plans offered by Obamacare, their alternatives would all impose even higher costs. An extended public debate over actual, filled-out Republican plans that force people onto catastrophic plans that do not cover basic medical expenses would be a political debacle. 

It is not only majority opinion that is swinging against Republicans on health care. Lobbyists, too, tend to organize against change. Hospitals are demanding that Republicans either keep covering the Americans who have insurance through Obamacare, or else compensate the hospitals for the losses they would suffer from facing millions of customers who can longer pay for their care. AARP has staked out opposition to one of the GOP’s favorite proposals to tweak Obamacare, which would allow insurers to charge even higher rates to older customers. 

Obamacare only permits insurers to charge older customers up to three times as much as the young. Republicans have railed against the burden this places on younger workers buying insurance — and it’s true that Obamacare makes the young pay more so the old can pay less. But now Republicans are learning the difference between posturing against a law, and cherry-picking its downsides, and actually having to endorse an alternative position. When you have to pick winners and losers, not just complain about the losers in the other party’s law, you make people mad.

9 comments:

skudrunner said...

Actually Ms. Shaw obamacare was fabricated on a lie. This was admitted to by Gruber when he said voters are stupid and if the truth was told about the law it would not pass. Oome other person who said you could keep your doctor and insurance company but the biggest lie was Affordable. Medicaid was affordable obamacare is not.

hat is needed is a national run Medicaid to offer assistance based on assets and income. That won't happen because it makes to much sense.

Les Carpenter said...

I opposeed the ACA for reasons of my own. Having said that, I am amused that the GOP has been so much against the law. If I'm not mistaken the ACA came out the conservative playbook. Wasn't the concept endorsed by thr conservative Heritage Foundation?

Kevin Robbins said...

Thanks for the link to that piece, Shaw.

Ducky's here said...

Today's to do list:

1. Threaten Iran.

2. Threaten freaking Nordstram for pulling Ivanka's clothing line.

3. Threaten courts.

4. Consult Gen. Flynn concerning monetary policy.
He's off the rails

5. Insult the Speaker of the House of Commons.


Shaw Kenawe said...


Ducky, did he really do all that today? I haven't been able to keep up. I've been at the hospital visiting Mr. Shaw Kenawe. He's been there since Saturday.

Ducky's here said...

He's been a busy little boy, Shaw.

His own party must be plotting the coup. This guy is nuts.

KanaW said...

Aw, Shaw, I hope Mr SK gets better soon!

I'm not sure he actually threatened Nordstrom as such, but he did whine about how nasty they were to drop Ivanka's line when it was losing money for them.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Thank you KanaW. It's been a roller coaster ride since November.

Can anyone imagine how the rabid righties would have reacted had President Democrat whined about a daughter's fashion line being dropped from a department store? Ivanka doesn't design any of her merchandise, she just puts the Trump name on it and hopes to rake in gazillions of dollars.

America and the world is so embarrassed by this colossal horse's ass in the White House.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Ducky, President 37% has nothing better to do than worry about his over-privileged daughter's fashion line? Has America ever seen a president as pathetic as Lord Dampnuts?

Our country and the world now appreciates what a prince of a man we had when President Obama was the POTUS. We went from the mountains into the gutter with this horse's ass.