Monday, March 6, 2017

Pressing "Pause" -- On Comments -- On The GOP Replacement "Plan"...


I will likely not offer much comment on the "plan" unveiled this evening -- for quite a while yet. It isn't even half-baked, in my view.

It makes little sense to debate the particulars of the "plan" -- given that the GOP presently very clearly lacks enough votes to pass it, in the Senate.

I say this, and it turns out that there are at least two fundamental, structural sticking points left to solve: (i) four GOP Senators have written a letter saying that if their states' Medicaid expansions are curtailed, they will not vote for the "plan" -- and that puts the GOP six votes short of the needed votes, in the Senate; and (ii) separately, the overall cost of the plan (still unknown -- awaiting non-partisan OMB estimates) will be a reason many House GOP members might bolt on it.

Said another way, even if only two of the four Senate "defectors" actually bolt (and even if all the House GOP-ers hang in there, and back it). . . it will still fail to become law. Word.

नमस्ते

1 comment:

condor said...

To my point, here is what some of the conservatives are saying -- about "Obamacare Lite":

. . .Barring radical changes, Republicans will not be passing a bill that ushers in a new era of market-based healthcare. In reality, the GOP will either be passing legislation that rests on the same philosophical premise as Obamacare, or will pass nothing at all, and thus keep Obamacare itself in place. . .

The GOP bill preserves much of the regulatory structure of Obamacare; leaves the bias in favor of employer healthcare largely intact, replaces Obamacare’s subsidies with a different subsidy scheme, and still supports higher spending for Medicaid relative to what was the case before Obamacare. . . .


Smile. . .