For the most part, overhauling Obamacare, otherwise known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as the Putting Government In Control Of Your Healthcare And Raising Your Premiums and Deductibles Act), is all the Republicans in Congress have been doing from the start. Once they found a way to start debate, they didn’t even give full repeal a shot
(Vox) On Wednesday afternoon, a cleaner repeal bill, the Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act, also failed, 45 to 55, with seven Republicans and all Democrats voting to block it.
The legislation would have repealed Obamacare’s spending on insurance coverage and its taxes on the wealthy and health care industries; it would not have included any new provisions to replace the law. The projected outcome, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would have been 32 million fewer Americans with health insurance 10 years from now without such a replacement.
That is NOT full repeal. So, what to do? Water the already watered down “repeal and replace” even more
GOP momentum grows for more modest plan to overhaul Obamacare
The Senate rejected a proposal Wednesday that would have repealed major parts of the Affordable Care Act, but Republican leaders were growing more confident about their chances of passing a more modest overhaul of the health-care law later this week.
Republicans appeared to be Âcoalescing around a “skinny repeal†that would abolish the individual and employer insurance mandates and perhaps just one tax in an attempt to sustain their seven-year quest to unwind President Barack Obama’s health-care law. But even if they succeed — and start negotiations with the House — they will face significant obstacles in accomplishing anything more substantial.
Top Republicans such as Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the chamber’s third-ranking Republican, said that although leaders have not yet found “the sweet spot†between conservatives and centrists, they had picked up support for a more modest plan because it did not include deep cuts to Medicaid. Some Republican senators were simply open to any legislation that could keep alive the roller-coaster push for an overhaul.
“We’re edging closer and closer†to getting 50 votes for a bare-bones plan, Thune said. He said leaders were betting that some Republicans who defected on votes this week would feel more pressure to support any bill that emerged from negotiations with the House to face a final vote in the Senate.
Of course, a “skinny” bill which dinks and dunks around the edges but leaves Obacare in force of law has real Conservatives up in arms, proclaiming it would be DOA. Even squishy Lindsay Graham finds that it is not the solution. A group of 10 Republican Governors is also against this deal.
This is a corner Congressional Republicans have backed themselves into. They ran on full repeal of Obamacare for 7 years. Yet, they aren’t really attempting to actually repeal Ocare. Just modify it. And their modifications aren’t even that good.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Read: GOP Controlled Senate Looks Towards More “Modest” Overhaul Of Ocare »
On the face of it, Ireland appears to be acting on climate change. Last year it appointed its first ever “climate action ministerâ€, and in June it 
That world is ending: a world of eating food shipped from country to country, a world of discount airlines, widespread meat consumption, and constant air conditioning. The problem with hoping for a technological solution to climate change is that it is often insufficiently critical of the ways of life that wreaked havoc on the rest of nature. It is easier to hope for a wild geoengineering solution than face the reality that billions of people need to change their daily habits in order to lessen the immense suffering appearing on the horizon. This hope cruelly prevents us from confronting the deep structural challenge of rethinking the way that some humans relate to nature. Obviously not all people experience this world in the same way, and it is a further tragedy that those who have contributed the least to climate change will be among those who experience its consequences earliest.
The Senate has blocked a wide-ranging proposal by Republicans to repeal much of former President Barack Obama’s health care law and replace it with a more restrictive plan.
At least since 2013, one of the biggest concerns in the climate change debate has been the so-called carbon budget — a fixed limit to the volume of carbon dioxide emissions that we can put into the atmosphere before irrevocably committing to a considerably hotter planet.
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