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Healthcare Reform

by coldwarrior ( 192 Comments › )
Filed under Economy, Health Care, Open thread, Politics at March 26th, 2017 - 9:03 am

I must admit, I lost the story a little bit over this repeal of Obamacare vote as I was actually WORKING in healthcare, not nattering on about it like the monkey suited puppets in congress.

1. Congress voted to repeal defund the bill a ton of times under Obama, and they knew he would veto is so the posturing worked. GOP-e got to look tough and not really have to do anything. I wish Obama called their bluff. We learned that the GOP-e really does not have an actual replacement bill or any real plan. But they looked good doing it under the last President. There is a large difference between repeal and defund…more on that later

2. The only was it was going to be repealed was under the following circumstances:

A complete repeal of ObamaCare is currently impossible. The House Freedom Caucus can push all the repeal bills they want, but they cannot get a clean repeal bill through the House let alone the Senate. They cannot get the votes needed. Period.

Additionally, despite claims to the contrary, the GOP has never passed an Obamacare “repeal bill”. Ever.

What the House did previously pass was a “defund bill” using the lower vote reconciliation process. President Obama vetoed it. A defunding bill was possible because of the financial pathway which falls under reconciliation rules. The current Ryan bill is almost identical to the 2016 defunding bill everyone is mistakenly calling a prior “repeal bill”.

A complete independent repeal bill of ObamaCare is currently impossible.

The only bill that can pass the Senate is a bill that can utilize the process of reconciliation, which has a vote threshold of 51 votes. A reconciliation bill is a budgetary bill designed around the financial drivers of ObamaCare. This is what HHS Secretary Tom Price, Speaker Ryan and President Trump are attempting to do.

A reconciliation bill cannot add substantively to the existing law. It can only modify the financial structures and retain the same 10-year budgetary impact. If you want substantive adds or removals of the law, beyond the financial structure, it is no longer a reconciliation bill.

If it is no longer a reconciliation bill, it requires 60 votes. 52 Republicans + 8 democrats. Democrats have already stated they will not support any substantive changes that undermine the key ObamaCare provisions.

Accepting the Democrats will not vote to repeal their signature law… The only way to fully repeal ObamaCare as an independent bill, and overcome the 60 vote threshold, would be to eliminate the filibuster rule (3/5ths vote threshold or 60 votes) in the Senate and drop the vote threshold to 51 votes, a simple majority, for all legislation.

Without the filibuster rule, and with the Senate having only a simple majority rule for passage, there would no longer exist an internal legislative check for any minority party to protect themselves from the laws created by a greater mob.

The ruling party would be in power as if they held a Senate super majority at all times. As a consequence, with minority protection eliminated, legislation is then ruled by the legislative federal dictates from those representing the Majority only. There is no legislative pressure to listen, build consensus or consider the position of the minority party.

You would think that constitutional conservatives would be necessarily predisposed against the dropping of a constitutional republic in favor of a pure democracy (mob rule).

However, within this current argument over the Price/Ryan approach to replacing ObamaCare you find exactly that. Emotional conservatives, and crony-constitutional conservatives like Mark Levin, arguing against the current House bill leaving only the option to drop the Senate filibuster on legislation and pass laws with a simple majority.

So you tell me, is this really a constitutional-conservative approach?

3. Trump pulls the bill, This makes Ryan look very very bad, incompetent. Ryan is and was a #nevertrumper and now he is going to lose his chair and probably his seat. This was a classic board room assassination.

4. The Freedom caucus and the rest of the professional howler monkey class in DC get to keep the $$$ coming in. If some bloggers can figure out the problem inherent in the above system, then I am sure that sooooper genius Ted Cruz knew it as well. So why oppose the only way to take down Obamacare short of letting it collapse then legislating from an emergency, which is always sub-optimal. Hmmm…Freedom Caucus doesn’t have the votes to pass their plan and then turns around and stops the only other plan that can work to get rid of Obamacare…fairly odd behavior 😆 , yeah…ummmhmmm. 😉

The Koch-aligned networks oppose the bill because they think it does not do enough to scale back former President Barack Obama’s health care policies.

“We want to make certain that lawmakers understand the policy consequences of voting for a law that keeps Obamacare intact,” Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips said. “We have a history of following up and holding politicians accountable, but we will also be there to support and thank the champions who stand strong and keep their promise.”

The vote is not a litmus test: Other money and resources would still be available to Republicans who do not vote with the network, formally called the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce. But those who vote with the network will have access to more.

Yet they know full well the process and hurdles explained above in repeal…the three step process that would have killed off Obamacare was pulled because it did not have the votes in Congress thanks toe the Freedom Caucus, and a full repeal from the Freedom Caucus will not pass the Senate…who benefits from the status quo which was maintained perfectly.

4a. My main problem with the Freedom Caucus and all of the other shit-throwing howler monkeys is that this movement was grass roots Tea Party. The GOP then strangled it, used Citizens United /McCain to inject billions of dollars into the system and now you don’t run the GOP any more. A very few do though, and it isn’t in your name or voice either.

5. Why was there no tort reform in this bill? That would save literally billions every quarter.

6. Status Quo is what he Chamber of Commerce et al wants. The CoC gets to shaft the American people for short term profit and the ideological shit-slingers get to keep the base riled up and the $$$ comin in!

7. EMTALA. I have yet to see any of the howler monkeys address this. The Hospitals have to get paid. We can’t work for free. Do you work for free?

8. The GOP did not get Trump elected. The People did…primary season is coming.

9.

😆 I hadn’t thought of that!

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