re: PB: Chime in if you support GOP's Cuckcare

Agreed. They should let Obamacare collapse.

they're even going to pass this bill with the same "we are going to have to tweak it" excuse the DEMs used for like 5 years

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i honestly don't see how anybody likes this

like i said in the other thread, this moves the crosshairs from the DEMs to the GOP. they're taking all the political liability from the disaster that is the ACA away from the DEMs. now any and everything wrong with the ACHA moving forward till sink the GOP

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They did this the moment they took up healthcare in congress. Frankly they took it up the moment Trump and the GOP won in November.

But if they do pass this, it will be hell for them. In many ways they made parts of the House bill worse. Which I really didn't think was possible.

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this is not a step to repeal the ACA. it's just going to become it's own behemoth

how the GOP is going about passing the bill is terrible

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I will say this, get ready for some insanely high premium jumps. If what I read is not being misinterpreted, they are planning to repeal the mandate everywhere but not the pre-existing condition clauses and other protections. That will be left up to the states.

What that is likely to do is one of two things. The first possibility is it will drive up premiums enormously. Because you won't have healthy people forced into the pools but insurers will not know how risky their pools are because they are still barred from prejudicing on pre-existing conditions. So many insurers will abandon individual markets - on exchange or off - and in other cases jack up rates to insulate themselves where they don't. Meaning everyone on the individual market will be squeezed enormously and price a ton people out of the market or just leave them without options. The other possibility is it will force even more states to abandon certain coverage provisions in order to stabilize what is absolutely going to be a very chaotic aftermath of the passage where insurers are threatening to abandon individual markets entirely.

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Agreed. They should let Obamacare collapse.

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This is probably the best political strategy, however I think Trump feels like he needs to mitigate ACA enough to help launch tax reform. I'm not sure how they're tied in.

One thing is for damn sure. The full repeal and replace is a pipe dream as they're just not enough votes to do anything more than mitigate Obamacare.

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Pass this bill with some amendments for Cruz and Lee and then start there, win some more seats in the midterms and then keep chipping away at it to keep perfecting it. It's what democrats would've done and they've made an art out of that.

ObamaCare will be repealed by a thousand cuts, not a single stab in the gut.

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I concur.

I haven't looked into the details of the McConnell bill yet, but I've posted before about the reasons why I supported passing Ryan's AHCA as part of the larger 3-phase strategy.

I'll also add a few new points here:

#1. You can only do so much with a reconciliation process that doesn't allow significant budget changes.

#2. It would be a political disaster for the Republicans not to repeal the individual mandate and other parts of ObamaCare.

#3. I think people are exaggerating the political effects of the GOP owning a bad health care system after passing the bill. (They will own it no matter what from being the majority party.) The same people on the right will blame the left, and the same people on the left will blame the right. Nobody is expecting a miracle overhaul of the gigantic health care sector overnight.

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It's what democrats would've done and they've made an art out of that

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But its not what they did...odd comment

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ObamaCare will be repealed by a thousand cuts, not a single stab in the gut.

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I think you are fooling yourself if you think Obamacare is going to be repealed. It may change names, but its core provisions are already institutionalized (unfortunately)

that ain't gonna happen

and when it doesn't, y'all will claim it is some nefarious clandestine force

what's going to happen is this law is going to be unpopular as frick, they're going to address it by adding their own regs that make government bigger, and it's going to be a bigger behemoth than the ACA

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But its not what they did...odd comment

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I think he means in the larger sense that the Democrats passed something with full knowledge that nobody in their base would be satisfied with it as is. It was meant to be a transition to necessary changes that would come later.

But yeah, the ACA was certainly more of a big, instantaneous impact type of bill. The ratchet effect of Progressive socialism makes it always more difficult to travel backwards than forwards.

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I think you are fooling yourself if you think Obamacare is going to be repealed.

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I think allowing states to do almost complete opt-outs of ObamaCare provisions is a pretty big fricking deal.

That's Phase 3 stuff. I don't think they can put that in through the Senate reconciliation procedure.