Hah, fair point. I guess it’s just that I’m seeing reactions to that statement that imply it’s a bigger deal than it seems to be to me. But I suppose I should expect that in this political climate.
Trump won’t be President in 2019.
Ah ha ha ha ha…
The only reason that hated this Heritage Foundation idea was because it was adopted by Democrats. That’s one of the reasons they can’t come up with a better idea – This was their better idea and they turned on it for political reasons.
Just a bit of a quibble, but
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/03/heritage-plan-paul-ryans-wet-dream-nothing-like-affordable-care-act
Edit.
Not related, but when you’re getting burned by Bill Kristol just more proof (we need more?) that we’ve slipped into an alternate dimension
As I understand it, the biggest problems with the ACA are concentrated in rural areas. Those are the counties where you tend to hear the premium horror stories, generally correlated with having only one insurer in the market.
Trump’s announced plan is to let it fail? To let premiums get completely out of control or watch markets lose all coverage? These are his voters, the people who thought he would fix everything for them. Forget the utter lack of empathy – does he want to be a one-term president?
Meh, details!
He didn’t even want that, but then he accidentally won.
This made me laugh:
This is primary a problem because those states with the most hurt rural areas are hurt because their governors refused to take the Medicaid expansion.
If the Republicans weren’t incompetent they probably could have made some marginal changes and then got all the Republican States to accept the Medicare expansion under the guise of some ruse to make it look like they made it now a good deal.
All of a sudden a huge swath of their constituents would actually have their lives improved and the Republicans could take credit for something real that actually happened. It would be easy to gloss over how they were the problem in the first place.
Now it looks like those states might start caving on Medicare expansion without any cover of actual changes.
That would have been genius.
Don’t really change much, get non-Medicare expansion states to expand. Claim victory as people in those states see improvements.
Hahahahahahahahaha
GOP counting chickens.
Good God. What planet were they living on where they had any level of confidence that the bill would pass?
I think they underestimated the electorate.
On this issue, a substantial number of people educated themselves on the actual provisions of the bill, then communicated with their representatives. For many of them, this was probably the first time they realized that Obamacare isn’t just free healthcare (and phones) for brown people – it’s the ACA, a law that benefits many of them. How else does a bill to kill Obamacare end up at 17%?
This is cause for optimism. It shows that voters aren’t quite as ignorant as I thought. They won’t always vote against their best interests out of tribalism, or because Fox told them to be angry at something.
Because it didn’t do that…at all. Calling this a health care bill at all was insulting. This was a tax break for the 1% at the expense of the other 99%. Plain and simple.
This is long but a really great read.
Members of the Freedom Caucus realized right away that there would be no negotiating. Pence tried to pump up the conservatives, telling them the fight was theirs to win and that they needed to help Trump and Ryan score a victory for the new administration. The plea landed on deaf ears. “Take one for the team” was a phrase repeatedly deployed; at one point, after Bannon used it, Joe Barton, a white-haired conservative from Texas, snapped back in response that Bannon was talking to them like children and he didn’t appreciate it. The room filled with uncomfortable silence; Bannon backed down and the meeting went on. (Barton eventually announced his support for the legislation—one of only a few who would eventually switch positions.) After several hours, the members returned to the Capitol feeling frustrated, calling the meeting “a waste of time” and wondering if they had missed their only window for cutting a deal with Trump.
That night, however, allies in the White House sent word to the Freedom Caucus that one thing they wanted—reforms to the “essential health benefits” provision under Title I of the Affordable Care Act—could be done. Excitement spread in the group, but there was also confusion; some members felt that would be a big enough concession to win their vote, while others felt it was only a step in the right direction. As they sought to clarify their internal disagreements, there was another meeting scheduled for the next morning, Thursday—this one at the White House and with the president himself.
Filled with hope once again, Freedom Caucus members were once again promptly disappointed. This meeting was yet another “take one for the team” seminar. The atmosphere was friendly, and the president had the group laughing with irrelevant riffs and stories of negotiations past, but it became clear, as soon as he made the “little shit” comment, that no serious changes were going to be made, because the president didn’t have sufficient command of the policy details to negotiate what would or would not be realistic for Ryan to shepherd through the House.
Props to the NYT: