Politics –
Obamacare:
GOP vs The Obama Legacy
The Republican Party is hell-bent on repealing Obamacare the second Donald Trump takes the oath of office. The only problem is: repealing it will cost billions, will take at least 10 years to implement, and will leave millions of Americans uninsured…since Republicans have no viable plan to replace it with.
Politics
So, what’s the problem with Obamacare? What exactly does the GOP dislike about it so much that has possessed them to attempt to dump it more than 30 times? The answer is simple: they don’t like it because Barack Obama created it, that’s why!
Officially named The Affordable Care Act, Republicans renamed it “Obamacare” in an attempt to create a derogatory term for a program they were certain would fail. Their scheme was also in keeping with a GOP plan born the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated, to “just say no” to any and everything he would ever support. However, Republicans never considered that the health care initiative would actually turn out to be a successful signature program for the president, or that Mr. Obama himself would adopt the name as a compliment rather than an insult.
Drats…foiled again!
Sen. Rand Paul, who is also a doctor, believes that repealing Obamacare without offering a viable Republican replacement plan that’s 10 times better just makes the GOP appear petty. His colleague, Sen. Bob Corker, agrees and is warning fellow Republicans that it would be “problematic,” “not very appealing” and “doesn’t seem very intelligent” to repeal the law without a replacement.
“To me, it’s much more prudent to figure out where you’re going to go from here, and attempt to do it all at the same time,” the Tennessee Republican said. “People will see some of the flaws in just repealing only.”
Yet that is exactly what they are primed to do.
Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, but somehow expecting a different result. Well, the insane Republicans are at it again!
In preparation for the umpteenth attempt to repeal Obamacare on Donald Trump Day next week, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn concocted a bright idea to conduct a Twitter poll to give Americans a chance to sound-off against Mr. Obama’s pet health-care law. She was convinced a large contingency of Americans would side with her and her fellow “NObamacare” Republicans. Boy, did her plan backfire!
Politics
Blackburn posted the poll last week and asked all Americans to retweet their support for killing Obamacare. She also asked Americans to list what they want to see as a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.
By the time the poll closed, a whopping 84% of the nearly 8,000 votes told Blackburn and her GOP cronies to LEAVE OBAMACARE ALONE! They actually WANT TO KEEP IT!!
Well, needless to say, an embarrassed Blackburn crawled under a rock and hid from the backlash of her complete miscalculation of the American sentiment regarding healthcare for all. Of course, it probably didn’t help that White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz also retweeted the poll to his more than 23,000 Twitter followers.
The president considers Obamacare his signature legislative achievement. To prove it, he recently took a trip to Capitol Hill to encourage Democrats to protect his legacy and defend healthcare against Republican repeal-and-replace efforts.
In response, Donald Trump tweeted a message for Republicans to “be careful” how they handle the issue. In a surprising and rare moment of intelligence, Trump warned his party colleagues that if their repeal-and-replace efforts lead to spikes in uninsured rates and premium prices, Republicans could suffer political fallout.
Stay tuned…
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DJ, my good man, you've done it again. Hit it out the park with this post.
Honestly, if this frightening bunch of yahoos wasn't such a threat to the health and well-being of ALL Americans, I'd be on the floor laughing my behind off because they've surely done it to themselves AGAIN – painted themselves into a lose/lose proposition. And now the warnings "to slow down and wait for a replacement are getting louder" among GOP Senators.
"A Half-Dozen GOP Senators Just Fired A Big Warning Shot On Obamacare Repeal"
Excerpt:
Anxiety about repealing Obamacare without a replacement got a lot more visible in the U.S. Senate on Monday evening, as a half-dozen Republican senators called publicly for slowing down the process. It’s not clear how strongly these senators feel about it, or whether they are willing to defy party leadership over how and when efforts to repeal Obamacare proceed.
But at least THREE other GOP senators have now expressed reservations about eliminating the Affordable Care Act without first settling on an alternative. That brings the total to NINE ― well more than the three defections it would take to deprive Republicans of the majority they would likely need to get repeal through Congress.
And the restlessness isn’t confined to the Senate. Members of the House Freedom Caucus on Monday evening issued their own call for slowing down the repeal process.
At the very least, these developments suggest that taking President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy off the books is unlikely to go as smoothly or as quickly as GOP leaders once hoped. […] – HuffPost
And the Repubs have had how many years to prepare for this? At least 6…!?!.
…..while they dithered away playing "let's PRETEND we're going to repeal Obamacare" by taking meaningless vote, after meaningless vote after meaningless vote.
Of course, now that the vote will actually count, there seems to be an "Oh sh*t" moment of clarity sinking in among more Repubs that they are "d*mned if we do and d*mned if we don't" ….especially if they don't have a credible replacement plan….which they DON'T.
Watching this whole thing play out should be quite interesting to say the least.
Oh and DJ…..Kudos on including the Marsha Blackburn twitter poll fiasco in your post. I love it!
When I first read about it yesterday I was nearly in tears with laughter…Lol. They reported that soon after the results became clear, that poll was deleted rather quickly.
Poor Marsha…smh. She's never been the brightest bulb in the pack.
LOL yes, poor Marsha. Too bad (for her) things didn't turn out the way she anticipated.
– DJ 😀
So let me get this straight. Repubs want to appeal Obamacare on Trumps day one but they have no plan of their own to put in place of it? LOL oh boy you can't make this stuff up. So what is going to happen to all the millions of people who have health care if Repubs cancel Obama's plan? Ha this is so dumb it's almost genius.
"House Conservative and Senate Moderates Teaming Up To Pump The Brakes On Obamacare Repeal"
WASHINGTON ― As moderate Senate Republicans push to slow down an Obamacare repeal, they are are finding common ground with one of their most unlikely allies in Congress: House conservatives.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus emerged from their weekly meeting in the basement of Tortilla Coast on Monday night and urged House GOP leadership to delay a possible vote on the repeal of Obamacare that was expected to take place Friday.
“We just need to slow down the process so that we can understand a little bit more of the specifics, the timetable, replacement votes, reconciliation instructions, etc.,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C) told reporters.
Informed that GOP leadership was considering a vote as early as this Friday, Meadows said that, without details on what a replacement would look like, the Freedom Caucus would encourage a delay.
“It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to get in that taxi and make good time, but I don’t know where I’m going,” Meadows said. “I want to know where I’m going.” […] – HuffPost
Sen. Johnson On O'Care: 'Seek To Repair It So The Public Can Use It'
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said that Republicans should aim to "repair" Obamacare and return power back to the states so that Americans have a better chance at accessing insurance coverage at an affordable price.
Johnson told reporters Tuesday that HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) often told colleagues to look at Obamacare like a broken bridge. The advice is not to buy it, but instead repair it.
"We'll seek to repair it so the public can use it. Nobody wants to pull out the rug from anybody else," Johnson told reporters. "We have to be designing the new bridges and things that actually work so I think that is a pretty good analogy."
The rhetoric is a shift from Republicans just a month ago who were gunning to repeal the Affordable Care Act as soon as possible without much forethought of what came next. Many rank-and-file Republicans are growing increasingly uneasy now that simply repealing Obamacare without a clear replacement could backfire, leave individuals in their states without insurance and cause a death spiral in the insurance market.
"Right now we have a bridge that is crumbling, close to collapse. We need to shore it up. It's very complex," Johnson said. "It's gonna take some time. We are probably going to need help from Democratic colleagues so let's start seeking that help right off the bat. Let's start voting on some of these elements."
So far, few conversations in the Senate have been actually occurring between Republicans and Democrats on a replacement. But, it is true that while Republican senators can repeal many parts of Obamacare through reconciliation, which only requires a majority vote in the Senate, they cannot replace it that way. That means that Democrats will have to sign on and Johnson said he has serious concerns they will help with the heavy lifting if Republicans charge blindly ahead with repeal.
"We need to understand what the whole package is," Johnson said. "How do we get votes for replace? I take Sen. Schumer at his word that if we vote repeal , they're not going to help us at all. That means we are going to have a hard time getting replacement." – TalkingPointsMemo