Health-Care Nightmare Only Beginning

[struggle4progress]

By Jonathan Chait
February 24, 2017
9:08 a.m.

... “repeal and delay” gave Republicans the easiest method for destroying Obamacare. The attraction of repeal and delay is that it did not require Republicans to cobble together majorities in both chambers to support any particular alternative plan, which — despite repeated promises and assurances of imminent success — they had failed to do since the legislative debate on health care began in 2009. Repeal and delay merely required finding 218 House Republicans and 50 senators to defund Obamacare on the premise that something, to be determined later, would be better.

But several Republicans expressed reservations about repealing the law without having any clarity about its replacement, if any. By January 9, repeal-and-delay had enough opponents — Republicans could only afford to lose two votes in the Senate — that the party’s leaders would have to scrap the plan, which they did.

The Republicans’ new strategy is to stage a single vote that would repeal Obamacare and simultaneously put replacement measures in place. A group linked to Mitch McConnell is trying to whip up support for this by circulating polling showing that just 17 percent of the public supports repealing Obamacare without an immediate replacement plan. What’s important about this is not the polling result itself — independent pollsters found the same thing since well before the inauguration — but the fact that Republican leaders are now emphasizing it, rather than pretending it’s not true.

Their professed hope is that the replacement plan will give Republican members of Congress something positive to offer in the wake of killing Obamacare. The trouble for them is that attaching a replacement bill to a repeal bill makes the vote much, much harder. Now that their best chance to repeal the law is gone, the remaining options are all fairly desperate ...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/trumps-health-care-nightmare-is-only-just-beginning.html

[guillaumeb]

1. "Repeal and replace" is a slogan.

Devising a better replacement is actual work.

[mwooldri]

2. Wanna drive down health care costs? Easy.

Nationalize health care. Everything.

NHS England covers everyone in England for about $130 billion in 2016. US government budget for Medicare in 2016 was $672 billion.

Single payer works. Proven, tried, trusted.

Also proven way to reduce costs: pay people to get through med school.

So the 'easy' replace plan is Medicare for All, and Medicare is allowed to negotiate costs for everything.

Employers will love it, as they won't have to worry about sorting out healthcare to their employees. The public know about Medicare and mostly trust it. Private insurers can still make money.

But then Repugs just can't bear to go there since they epitomize the worst side of American individualism and anything that's for the collective good that bears a burden on an individual... not for them. So we'll never see anything like single payer or Medicare for all from them any time soon.

[guillaumeb]

3. Agreed. But it would take the profit out of providing access to care.

The GOP is all about profit.