Tag Archives: have-the-votes

Yet More Argle Bargle From the Oval Office

by CarsonMWFY Posted on May 1, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Donald Trump on the Republican health care bill today:

“I want it to be good for sick people. It’s not in its final form right now,” he said during an Oval Office interview Monday with Bloomberg News. “It will be every bit as good on pre-existing conditions as Obamacare.”

The latest version of the House GOP bill, which Republican leaders are trying to figure out whether they have the votes to pass this week, wouldn’t live up to that promise and would weaken those protections.

What does this mean? Just the usual argle bargle? Has Sean Spicer already repudiated it? Hold on, let me check….

I guess not. Spicer says “we’re not there yet,” but he was talking about votes, not the legislative language. I can’t tell for sure, but it doesn’t look like anyone even asked Spicer directly about whether Trump planned to ask for further amendments to the bill.

Just argle bargle, I guess. Does anyone on Capitol Hill even pay attention to Trump’s aimless word spasms anymore?

From: 

Yet More Argle Bargle From the Oval Office

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yet More Argle Bargle From the Oval Office

Note From a Conservative: Republicans Can’t Repeal Obamacare on Their Own

by BlondellWisdom Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Conservative Ramesh Ponnuru considers what would happen if Republicans “repealed” Obamacare but left in place the preexisting conditions ban:

This course could cause the insurance exchanges, already in trouble, to collapse entirely. That’s because the Republican bill would scrap the individual mandate while keeping Obamacare’s requirement that insurers treat sick and healthy people alike.

….The Republicans to whom Philip Klein talked are blasé about this possibility. If millions of people lose their coverage, these Republicans plan to say that the exchanges were already collapsing before they touched the law. It seems unlikely that the press will go along with this narrative, in part because many health-care experts, liberal and conservative, will tell reporters that it’s false.

What Republicans have not faced is that they don’t have the votes to repeal Obamacare. Calling a bill that doesn’t repeal Obamacare’s central provisions “repeal” is no escape from that dilemma.

It’s a sign of the times that Ponnuru has to warn Republicans that the press won’t go along with their preferred narrative because it’s a lie. It’s also a bit starry-eyed, unfortunately. The fact that it’s a lie certainly wouldn’t stop the right-wing press; wouldn’t stop Trump; and would quite likely affect the rest of the press at least to the extent of calling it “controversial” and declining to take sides.

That said, Ponnuru is right. If you repeal some of Obamacare but leave the rest in place, it would cause the entire program to collapse. It might even go further, and cause the entire individual insurance market to collapse. Republicans better think hard about whether they want to be on the business end of something like that happening.

Read more: 

Note From a Conservative: Republicans Can’t Repeal Obamacare on Their Own

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Note From a Conservative: Republicans Can’t Repeal Obamacare on Their Own