Back in 2016, Republicans in Congress passed a clean repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Obama quickly vetoed the legislation and Republicans lacked the votes to overturn it.
It was a cynical move. The Republicans who voted for the bill knew that it would be vetoed and that they wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences. According to the Congressional Budget Office, repeal would strip 32 million Americans of their insurance and cause premiums to double in ten years.
Now, though, Republicans might have to face the music. After the latest collapse of a repeal-and-replace bill in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling on the Senate to vote on the same bill Obama vetoed. That puts GOP Senators in a difficult place. They either vote for the clean repeal and suffer the wrath of the people who will be hurt or they vote against it, angering their base and exposing the hypocrisy and cynicism of their earlier vote.
Republicans clearly overplayed their hand on repealing Obamacare. After seven years of telling Americans the new law would wreck the economy and leave insurance unaffordable, none of their doomsday predictions have come true. Instead, the law is more popular than ever. While premiums are still increasing, they’re going up far more slowly than before the Affordable Care Act. The number of people uninsured is at an all-time low. Even Republican governors are embracing the law’s Medicaid expansion.
Instead of repealing Obamacare, Republicans should fix it. They might anger their base but they also would show the American people that they know how to govern, something they’ve yet to prove. They desperately need some sort of legislative victory before the mid-term elections next year.
The whole episode is a reminder of the political precariousness of tackling health care. For two cycles last decade, reform of health care led Democrats to take control of both Houses of Congress and the presidency. While the 2006 wave election was as much about the incompetence of the Bush administration, weariness with the Iraq War and a host of scandals as anything, health care reform was central to the Democrats’ domestic agenda. In 2008, the Obama-Clinton primary focused on the details of how to overhaul the system.
Once Democrats had power, consensus on how to fix the system was far more difficult than party leaders anticipated. The drawn-out debate opened-up the sausage factory and people saw up close the unseemly legislative deals that make Congress work. Republicans had little to lose from bashing the process and all aspects of the bill. The years-long implementation process created extended uncertainty and kept Obamacare a political hot potato that fueled the GOP’s successes up and down the ballot.
Today, though, few of the worst fears of Obamacare have materialized. The market is stabilizing and many people are enjoying health care they’ve long been unable to afford. Few people want to go through another seven years of restructuring our health care system again. They’re tired and ready to move on.
Expanding access to health care has been a Democratic goal for decades. Under Obama, they got it done. It’s clear now that some form of the Affordable Care Act will guide our health care policy for the foreseeable future. We won’t go back to the days of a steadily increasing uninsured rate and dramatically increasing premiums.
The victory came at a steep political cost. Democrats lost election after election at all levels of government. Today, they need to revisit who they are. Their success in 2006 and 2008 reflected a broadly based consensus that our health care system was broken, particularly for working class Americans. Democrats championing health care showed they understood the concerns of their blue-collar base. They need to reconnect with that constituency again.
Republicans, for their part, should learn a lesson. Instead of trying to undo a signature Democratic accomplishment, they should focus on some their primary goals. With both Houses of Congress and the Presidency, they could reel-in the debt that they so abhor. They could reduce increases in spending on Social Security and Medicare instead of just talking about it. Like health care reform, making hard decisions about contentious legislation will probably come with a steep political cost, but it will also give them an accomplishment for the ages. Right now, they just look incompetent.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
The Republicans whined and cried like annoying sanctimonious little brats for seven years. And during that excruciatingly painful length of time they were too lazy, ignorant, and incompetent to come up with a viable alternative. They were too busy whining to actually do their jobs and come up with a better solution. And now they think that they can do it in a matter of months? There are single celled organisms that possess more intellect than the best the Republicans have to offer. There is no cure for stupid and it has reached epidemic proportions in the Republican party. Even AFTER Donald Trump Junior releases his emails and ADMITS to the meeting with the Russian lawyer a poll recently revealed that only 45% of the Republicans (AKA pathetic, drooling imbeciles) believe it actually happened. How can someone that F@#$ing stupid even manage to practice general hygiene? I have serious doubts as to their ability to actually read and mark a ballot. I hate calling them ignorant. Anyone have suggestions on how to politely address a brain dead moron?
One that is more concerned about party THAN the folks who put him or her in office.
Sorry to be the English teacher but it disturbs me greatly that we have a society of people who don’t know the difference between you’re (you are) and your (something that is yours). The misuse of then and than is just one more example of the successful Republican strategy to “dumb down” America by gutting funding for education. Their perpetual and incessant lies are not so easily recognized when the people hearing/reading them don’t know and/or use proper English. I like to think that as liberals and progressives we are more intelligent THAN that.
If you were half as smart as you think you are THEN you wouldn’t make stupid grammatical errors. I must admit I am impressed with how smart you think you and your wife are. I love you way you used your “superior intellect” to criticize me when without your pathetic command of the language NONE of this would have happened, BIG BOY. Emphasis on BOY.
The only “lesson” the GOP in Congress will, or has learned, is that getting re-elected is paramount, which they are sure depends of supporting Trump, who is intent on destroying anything Pres. Obama accomplished. The Senate leadership is tone deaf when it comes to any form of inclusion, be it Dems, women, or even moderates in his own caucus.
A couple of days ago, Mitch McConnell could be heard saying, essentially, “We don’t have the votes to pass a bill to strip health insurance from 20 million Americans, so we’ll have to wait for John McCain, who just used his luxury insurance plan to pay for an operation at the Mayo Clinic, to get back to town to vote with us.” The utter hypocrisy of that escaped the notice of most media outlets.
There seems to be a couple of other factors in play with regard to ACA.
The first is, will Republicans enforce the mandate. I’ve been listening to this idea being tossed about recently. If they don’t enforce it, then the younger individuals who refuse to buy insurance will suffer no sanction as a result. Their participation is pivotal to the premise of healthcare and insurance for all.
The second is, will Congress opt out of paying the insurance companies their block money to keep premiums low for those who can’t otherwise afford coverage.
Either could lead to that spiral of costs and affordability and thus bring the prognostications of Republicans to fruition; not without their help though.
An additional aspect of the cost picture is the current instability. Mitch McConnell is running wild trying to get something, anything passed. At the moment, a win for Senate Republicans is more important than healthcare for the people of their respective states. Point being, as long as this battle continues to rage in Congress, premium prices will continue to go up because of that instability.
Moving forward, I guess we’ll see how much Congressional Republicans will gerrymander healthcare to suit their needs while those that need coverage, care, and treatment will continue to suffer and wonder how they will make ends meet should the unthinkable happen to them. Of course, Congress is n’t worried. They and their staff have excellent healthcare benefits at the cost of the American people who will never enjoy the same level of coverage and protection. Donald Trump isn’t worried either. He can afford whatever he chooses. It’s the people who don’t have two nickels to rub together that suffer.
Such a fine example of Christian values, charity, and compassion they display.