“Give us control of the White House and Congress, and we’ll repeal and replace Obamacare” we were told since 2010. Well, Republicans have it, and yet
House Republicans claim a major victory with passage of health-care overhaul
House Republicans on Thursday narrowly passed a controversial bill to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, claiming a major victory even as the measure faces an uncertain fate in the closely divided U.S. Senate.
Under intense pressure to show they can govern and to make good on their promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Republicans pushed through the bill after adopting a last-minute change that earned it just enough votes to pass. However, the House version fell significantly short of the GOP’s long-held goals, making major dents in large portions of the current law but not outright repealing it.
That’s all you really need to know. It’s not repealed. For all their machinations, they might as well have simply modified Ocare. This bill was simply the same as the last bad one, with a few minor additions.
The measure proceeded without the benefit of an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office of its cost and impact on insurance coverage, and it did so after many Republicans openly acknowledged that they hadn’t read the bill. President Trump also promised “insurance for everybody,†which the measure will not achieve.
They read it the other month when they tried to pass this garbage. On the plus side, the Senate claims it has no intention in taking up the bill. Perhaps they’ll take up one of the plans by Senators like Rand Paul, which actually repeal Ocare and replace it with something that works. But, then again, perhaps not, because there are too many squishes in the Senate, once who like to use government power, because it helps their own power. And the House plan does not reduce government involvement in our health insurance and health care decisions.
The political positioning over the bill started immediately, with the GOP claiming that it would lower premiums and increase access to health insurance and Democrats casting it as a huge transfer of wealth because it would eliminate many of the taxes imposed under the Affordable Care Act, including on wealthy Americans.
Maybe it does the first, lowering premiums (and hopefully, deductibles) and increasing access. What the Democrats are whining about is the Cadillac Tax, which wasn’t scheduled to start till 2018, before it was pushed off till 2020 in a bipartisan fashion, and, unless Speaker Paul Ryan made a big change, is now pushed off till 2025. And that tax would hit regular employers, including ones with less than 50 employees, and would mean that employers would reduce their offerings in order to avoid that 40% surcharge on plans with a yearly cost of over $10,800. Heck, even left leaning unions hate it. Also, it would kill the investment tax. But, you know, the party which relies on The Rich can’t avoid trotting out their typical tax cuts for the rich, even when they aren’t being charged yet.
It really shouldn’t be this difficult. And it may very well cost the GOP the Senate in 2018, and the possibility of a massive sea change for the House is now not out of bounds. Why do we want to keep voting for this liars?
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Read: GOP Controlled House Barely Passes Bill That Doesn’t Really Repeal Obamacare »
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