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Are Republicans Poised to Save ObamaCare?

Are Republicans Poised to Save ObamaCare?

“Scared to death”

While we await the Supreme Court decision regarding federal vs. state subsidies, Republicans can’t decide if they want the subsidies upheld or struck down.  Indeed, some believe that upholding them will be best for Republicans (note, not best for America or Americans).  Sharyl Attkisson reports:

It would theoretically be a victory for Republicans who oppose Obamacare: Americans would likely find the health care law less palatable if tax money isn’t helping pay for their mandatory policies. They would suddenly be exposed to the reality faced by those who aren’t getting subsidies: insurance may cost more, come with higher deductibles, and provide less coverage.

But some Congressional Republicans are more worried about winning the Supreme Court case than losing it.

“There are Republicans right now scared to death that we’re going to win,” says one Republican leader who did not want to be quoted by name. “They’re in meetings right now planning ways to revive the subsidies if the [Supreme] Court strikes them down.”

They are “scared to death” because they are worried the Democratic and media narratives would place the blame on Republicans for the loss of subsidies by those who’ve purchased ObamaCare through the federal exchanges.  Attkisson explains:

According to a dozen Congressional Republicans who discussed the topic but did not wish to be named, they worry the public wouldn’t view a strike-down of the subsidies as a weakness in Obamacare, but would instead blame Republicans for taking money away from them.

These Republicans also worry that the news media will coalesce behind that view, making it difficult to overcome from a public relations standpoint.

Politico reports that 31 senators are backing a bill by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, that would restore subsidies for the affected Obamacare customers through September 2017.

Large percentages of those polled say they would support a fix if the subsidies are found to be unlawful. Significant numbers of those polled don’t understand how the federal and state exchanges work.

I understand that optics matter, but it seems a bit much for Republicans to be the ones to save ObamaCare when not doing so would do no harm to America’s poorest who need health care—they’ve been covered by Medicaid since long before ObamaCare, after all.

As Attkisson notes, “the irony is that Republicans would, in effect, be providing a crucial fix to a law they’ve opposed since its inception. In other words, when Obamacare would be at greatest risk of crumbling, Republicans would be ensuring its survival.”

 

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Comments

The sniveling wing of the party needs to be driven out. They care not for their nation, nor their fellow Americans, nor
their party, but only for their own tenuous hold on what little power they have.

They would rather surrender and be liked / adored by the press rather than make the hard choices and actually FIX the issue, which is that the Federal Government has NO business at all doing ANYTHING with health care (or retirement planning for that matter).

Geez, how ’bout they just get out in front of this with the truth. BIG campaign to tell it to the American people.

That’d be so crazy, it just might work..

Is there any doubt that Chief Justice Roberts is going to fix the law again!

healthguyfsu | May 29, 2015 at 10:41 am

I say burn it down…but I could see this turning ugly.

Will the Republicans ever give a thought to all the millions of people who were robbed of the decent, functional insurance policies they could afford to buy and left with nothing but completely unaffordable and/or greatly inferior options? Are the many millions being harmed by this atrocious scheme so unimportant in the electoral map?

    CloseTheFed in reply to Radegunda. | May 29, 2015 at 12:16 pm

    Like me. I had to give up on my private insurance and go to the V.A., where I wait, and wait and wait for an appointment.

      Amazed in reply to CloseTheFed. | May 29, 2015 at 2:53 pm

      Be sure to get a good look, or a copy if you can regularly, of your VA medical file. The whole file. When my dad went in for a follow-up for his Parkinsons, a nurse was flipping through his chart and said “And what treatment plan do you have for the cancer?”. My dad said “What cancer”. She turned red when she realized she had let the cat out of the bag on the 2-year-old notation on the chart saying he had Esophogeal cancer. He died from it within the year.

The only Republicans who would end Obamacare are the ones not yet elected. The ruling class of politicians have more power with programs such as Obamacare. They are not going to hand back that power, because that diminishes their opportunity for graft.

The problem is not the ratio of Repubs to Dems, it’s the size of government. Expect Obamacare to become a permanent part of the American experience for generations to come.

Freddie Sykes | May 29, 2015 at 11:05 am

Republicans should remember that employer penalties are triggered if one of their employees receives a federal premium subsidy. Depending upon how this is interpreted, it could mean that states not eligible for subsidies may have an economic advantaged with respect to the employer mandate over those that have set up state exchanges.

I would use this as a selling point assuming that the IRS follows the text of the PPACA.

    Not A Member of Any Organized Political in reply to Freddie Sykes. | May 29, 2015 at 2:55 pm

    BINGO! We have a winner!

    RE: “states not eligible for subsidies may have an economic advantage”

Henry Hawkins | May 29, 2015 at 11:24 am

..says one Republican leader who did not want to be quoted by name.

According to a dozen Congressional Republicans who discussed the topic but did not wish to be named..

There’s your problem. Elected officials who refuse to operate in the open, refusing to disclose their positions and plans to their constituents, coupled with a media that treats such unattributed quotes as fact, while simultaneously affording protective anonymity to these officials.

Well…. it looks like American citizens are out of the loop. Besides, what business is it of ours?

    I couldn’t agree more, Henry. Sharyl Attkisson is one of the few (maybe the only) investigative journalists who deserves the name, so I do believe that she talked to these cowardly Republicans and that they said what she reports. From anyone else, I would be skeptical (I wouldn’t even quote them quoting unnamed sources actually).

    Not A Member of Any Organized Political in reply to Henry Hawkins. | May 29, 2015 at 2:57 pm

    It’s so much harder to steal that money if you’re out in the open.

    Oops!

    I wish not to be named!

    Marla Hughes in reply to Henry Hawkins. | May 29, 2015 at 4:21 pm

    No, the problem is not insisting any reporter provide sources. I like Attkinson but remember, she’s not conservative, she just happened to want to research a great story. Don’t know her motivation, just appreciate her work. When she is willing to show her sources. Trust, but verify.

You can’t fix stupid!

Attention Republican leadership … Scott Walker has a play book, study it carefully. VERY carefully. That is all.

Congress is NEVER going to “fix” itself. With lifetime politicians basking in the glory they created for themselves out of the riches STOLEN from “the people”, we need a constitutional convention or a revolution. There needs to be TERM LIMITS for ALL elected AND APPOINTED federal positions. And no “sovereign immunity” for government officials that violate the laws or civil rights of others.

    CloseTheFed in reply to Fiftycaltx. | May 29, 2015 at 12:18 pm

    And if you mean to include all federal employees except the military, coast guard, etc., I’m with you.

    Clean out the I.R.S. every 10 years.

      nordic_prince in reply to CloseTheFed. | May 29, 2015 at 12:29 pm

      Better yet, abolish the 16th Amendment (along with the other Progressive-Era amendments). If there must be taxes, make them consumption taxes. Taxes are a penalty, and there is no good motivation for penalizing income (i.e. productivity) by taxing it.

        Ragspierre in reply to nordic_prince. | May 29, 2015 at 2:49 pm

        Yeeeup. The tax code is riddled with social engineering, which is NOT the business of the Federal gobmint. The ONLY purpose of an acceptable tax system is the generation of revenue to fully cover ALLLLLLL Constitutional activities of the central government.

        No more. No less.

They are STUPID. The voters that would blame the republicans if the subsidies are lost are the low info voters that WILL NOT vote republican anyway.

    sjf_control in reply to gmac124. | May 29, 2015 at 2:06 pm

    As my insurance guy pointed out when I mentioned the same thing, most of them don’t vote at all — until somebody takes their toys away. The media would make such a stink, that the usually non-voting rabble would be aroused to vote out the dirty republicans that took away their subsidy. He says we’d never again see another republican president.

    healthguyfsu in reply to gmac124. | May 29, 2015 at 3:06 pm

    I’ll go out on a limb and suggest there is a tier between informed and low info…we’ll call it the marginally informed voter.

    Some people won’t form opinions of their own…they will parrot exactly what they read or hear from whatever sound byte they catch here and there. Who they listen to here and there makes all the difference in their worldview because they lack original thought.

    These people are a nuisance and just informed enough to be dangerous. With the inundation of brand name MSM with propaganda, lies, and flat omissions I don’t see a rosy picture in this demographic.

    As close as elections have been these past few years and with our country as polarized as ever, this group could be a significant pool influencing the outcome.

I’m glad you understand the “optics”, Fuzzy, because I’m having a really hard time figuring out how Reps get the blame for something SCOTUS does.

But I trust the media to spin it that way.

Sammy Finkelman | May 29, 2015 at 3:57 pm

They would get the blame for leaving people in the lurch, owing money to the federal government and/or losing their insurance.

They would also get blamed for just extending or retroactiuvely authorizing the current situation.

Best would be to propose some sort of workable REPLACEMENT for Obamacare – let Obama veto it or let it fail in the Senate – then pass a temporary extension.

The Democrats say they will push and ONLY vote for a permanent extension. If they did that, they’d shift the blame back onto themselves

I don’t think any Republican , at least republicans in general, have any good plan for replaceming Obamacare, at least not anything ppeople are prepared to agree on.

It’s hard to comne up with a good system, and any way to clean up the mess will cost money.

Ideas for a temporary system could be to abolish Medicaid (to get rid of pernicious means testing) and maybe everything the federal government does except Medicare and what civil service people get – and give everybody a tax credit applicable only to health insurance or health expenditures, with no one bound by contract to continue it so there won’t be fraud.

This “tax credit” would be computed separately from any income taxes. All other considerations, including unpaid students loans, fines, and child support payments and even nonfiling of taxes would be ignored.

Tax credit should vary by age and health or previous health expenses.

All persons buying any insurance policy should be charged the same amount with the only differences that depend on health or age being in the deductible.

That could means ometimes a million dollar deductible.

There should be an incentive for correct pricing. Perhaps amandatory reinsurance auction.

Maximum out of pocket might be $30,000 a year, 3 times in ten years or something like that, with the options to get the missing money ranging from a loan against tax returns (if the amount is small) to a credit card loan or a loan against future socxial security payements, with the loan forgiven if the person dies before completing payment

Sammy Finkelman | May 29, 2015 at 3:57 pm

Also hspiotals and doctors might get some direct payments. Med school stuition mmight as wlel be paid.

Sammy Finkelman | May 29, 2015 at 3:58 pm

Maybe 85th percentile

Marla Hughes | May 29, 2015 at 4:56 pm

Let’s just go with the Congress people are humans, too approach instead of the ‘because it confirms my own bias, I’m wiling to believe anything bad, backed up with sources or not’ that Attikson presents. I admire her, but but she’s also an anti-vaxxer and not a conservative so I want to be able to evaluate her sources before jumping into the pond with her. Trust but verify.
Try reading the Politico story that Attikinson references for yourself. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/republicans-still-groping-for-obamacare-replacement-118272.html#ixzz3bIGwuYqx Since Politico is a leftist hack website, I don’t expect it’s ‘journalists’ to forgo their own confirmation bias and give a full explanation of what GOP congresspeople said, but at least it’s more thorough than Attkison’s and is not third hand interpretations.

Subotai Bahadur | May 29, 2015 at 6:34 pm

Right now, the DIABLO’s are busily driving away their voter base so effectively that it is really doubtful that they will be able to hold on to Congress, let alone win the presidency [especially with the pre-anointed candidate, Jeb]. Watch what happens to them if they are the ones who save Obamacare. Keep in mind that Roberts is already viewed as a traitor for saving it the first time. There is no acceptable excuse if they save it a second.

They’re probably all being extorted — just like Dennis Hasetert.

Boehner in particular: just imagine what pathetic acts that poor excuse for a man has engaged in over the years that the left is holding over his head.

Of course Boehner is being extorted. No one is that pathetically weak. Simply put, he is selling out his country for the sake of his vanity.

So much for all that “courage of your convictions” caca. I would pay good money just to hear one of these “leaders” admit that they don’t really give a sh*t about us, but that their only job is to stay in office.