The House vote
So -- ZEGS and the gang managed to make ACA repeal even worse than before, horrible enough to get the Freedom Wingnut Caucus on board -- and the moderates caved and went along. I stand by my comment here in response to Marc McKenzie: "it will die in the Senate -- and most House Republicans will be on
record as voting to take away the insurance of millions of their
constituents." They've handed us a weapon to belabor them with from now until November 2018. "Hey hey, goodbye" indeed.
And they've done that without actually repealing the ACA, since the Senate must pass something as well, and at the moment things are looking unpromising there. It's not clear that the Senate can pass anything. Assuming they nuke the filibuster if it gets in the way, and only 50 votes are needed, still a mere three defections would defeat the effort. Fewer Senators can afford to appear extremist (state borders can't be gerrymandered). If they do cobble together something they can pass, it needs to be reconciled with the House bill. Can they forge something that 50 Senators and the House Freedumb crowd will support? I'm betting no. And even if they succeed, they'll have kicked millions of their own voters off health insurance. Those voters won't be pleased.
Should we wish for that outcome? Of course not. The best outcome, for us, is for repeal to fail and for those voters to realize the Republicans would have taken away their insurance, but Democrats prevented it.
But whatever happens, I'd hate to be in the Republicans' shoes right now.
And they've done that without actually repealing the ACA, since the Senate must pass something as well, and at the moment things are looking unpromising there. It's not clear that the Senate can pass anything. Assuming they nuke the filibuster if it gets in the way, and only 50 votes are needed, still a mere three defections would defeat the effort. Fewer Senators can afford to appear extremist (state borders can't be gerrymandered). If they do cobble together something they can pass, it needs to be reconciled with the House bill. Can they forge something that 50 Senators and the House Freedumb crowd will support? I'm betting no. And even if they succeed, they'll have kicked millions of their own voters off health insurance. Those voters won't be pleased.
Should we wish for that outcome? Of course not. The best outcome, for us, is for repeal to fail and for those voters to realize the Republicans would have taken away their insurance, but Democrats prevented it.
But whatever happens, I'd hate to be in the Republicans' shoes right now.
posted by Infidel753 at 4:24 PM
9 Comments:
The rightwing crazies are probably safe. Their constituents are as crazy as they are. But the moderate republicans have just shot themselves in the foot because they caved to White House pressure. It is now up to Democrats to fill in the holes the those republicans just jumped in to.
There 20 senators, most of them moderates, who voted no. Kudos to them for having a set.
The Hill had an article naming them all, with a few quotes.
I haven't calmed down yet -- and don't plan to until at least November 2018. Pointing out the ugliness of this bill in 2017/ 18 should be a task the Democratic Party can manage, unlike their lack of pushback and salesmanship (IMO) on the ACA. Grassroots anger is propelling our side much as it did the wingnuts in 2009/ 10. The difference being we have the benefit of arguing for the truth and for a compassionate society.
I seen some figures on costs this morning, it was about like the worst as far as premiums, think it was for prices in South Dakota for example ... but it put a couple senior citizens in their 60's living on like $25K a year ... get this ... having to pay $44K a year for insurnace, insanity! If it ever does get through the Senate though ... them MF's better hope all the goddamn senior citizens die before the next election, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh {:-) ... Yes, my wife and I are senior citizens
Jerry: And they've given us the shovel to do it.
Rational: At this point, if they want to do the right thing, they should change their party. I'm not ready to give any Republican the benefit of the doubt any more. They've pretty much all been enablers of Trump in one way or another.
Hackwhacker: It should be. They've always made the error of trying to be genteel and treat the Republicans as some sort of normal opponent. Surely that will come to an end now.
Ranch: They may be hoping it kills them off.
Can't argue your point Infidel. But they did at lead show they have a set. As small as they may be.
Did they, though? Or are they just more afraid of their constituents' wrath than of Trumps' wrath? Whatever, we'll take what we can get, regardless of the motive.
I don't know if you heard this, but our not-so-illustrious PM, Malcolm Turnbull, praised Trump just a few days ago for his efforts to dismantle the ACA, saying that what he's doing is "great", and urging him to "keep at it". Hopefully, people here are taking notice, as it's an open secret that Turnbull's party (our own version of the Republican Party) longs to replace our (pretty decent) public health care system with some "user pays" abomination. In any event, Turnbull's brown-nosing of Trump is very embarrassing - our PM seems to be one of the few Western leaders who doesn't regard Trump as the complete, blithering moron he really is.
Zosimus: I hope people are taking notice. I can't imagine why any country which has already achieved a full-coverage national system would want to swap it for the godawful hodgepodge we have here.
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