With Senate Republicans struggling to come to a consensus on Trumpcare, the repeal and replacement for the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) made a radical, scorched earth proposal to popular vote loser Donald Trump, and of course Trump bit.
Because it's radical and extreme. Just totally repeal Obamacare, postponing implementation by a year, to give more time for coming up with a replacement.
"On the current path, it looks like Republicans will either fail to pass any meaningful bill at all, or will instead pass a bill that attempts to prop up much of the crumbling ObamaCare structures. We can and must do better than either of these—both because the American people deserve better, and because we promised better," Sasse wrote in the letter.He asked Trump to call on Republicans to repeal Obamacare in early July if they cannot reach an agreement on a comprehensive plan by then.
"We should include a year-long implementation delay to give comfort to Americans currently on ObamaCare that a replacement plan will be enacted before expiration," Sasse added.
He then suggested Congress cancel its August recess to work on a replacement plan, passing that by Labor Day.
Which is so dumb on so many levels that of course Trump loves it. First, they can't come up with 50 votes now—it's not going to happen by Labor Day. Second, it probably couldn't be done under Senate rules—it would likely require 60 votes. Democrats aren't going to help with this. Third, it would not provide comfort to anyone—insurance companies would leave the exchanges in droves, knowing what we all know—they won't come up with a replacement plan, not by Labor Day, not in a year. They haven't managed to do it in seven years, not gonna happen in a few months or even a year.
And it would be a disaster. Because this isn't the first time the hare-brained scheme of repeal without replacement has come up, the Congressional Budget Office told us what would happen: 18 million people would lose insurance for 2018, 32 million would lose it by 2026. Premiums would increase by 20 percent to 25 percent (compared to current law) in the first year and would double—increase 100 percent—by 2026. That's under an analysis done for a bill that would have done repeal in phases, not all in one shebang like Sasse and Trump want to do. The analysis assumed a Medicaid phase-out. This would apparently just cut it off all at once. So the numbers could be much, much higher.
If you need more indication that this is a really dumb, dumb idea, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is all over it, tweeting he's spoken with both Trump and leadership to do it. Never mind that just a few months ago, in January, he said "it's imperative that Republicans do a replacement simultaneous with repeal."
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2s99JXN
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