Leaked audio reveals Republicans are in utter disarray on Obamacare repeal

adoo · Jan 27, 2017

When congressional Republicans went off to Philadelphia for a retreat this week, they hoped to make at least some progress toward a consensus about how to proceed with repealing and replacing Obamacare.

However, secret recordings of closed-door discussions at the retreat obtained by the Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis reveal that the party remains divided, uncertain, and deeply concerned about how to move forward.

It’s long been clear that there are a great many unsettled questions regarding the legislative and policy details of the GOP’s repeal effort. These include:

How quickly should repeal go into effect?

What, exactly, would the replacement be — can Republicans come up with a replacement that would be affordable for sick people who need insurance?

Should Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion be repealed?

Should the rest of Medicaid be transformed into a “block grant,” program as Paul Ryan has long supported, which would almost surely mean major reductions in the number of people it serves?

Should an Obamacare repeal bill also defund Planned Parenthood?

Does Donald Trump’s administration have a plan, or can his aides offer any more specifics about what they want policy-wise?

The Post’s report reveals that every single one of these questions remains completely unsettled, and that at least some within the party have grave concerns about all of them. one can infer that they may have intentionally leaked the audio.

Rocket River · Jan 27, 2017

Unsurprising

Rocket River

Haymitch · Jan 27, 2017

I mean... those are all good questions that they should be asking themselves if they want to look at an Obamacare repeal.

tallanvor · Jan 27, 2017

Haymitch said: ↑

I mean... those are all good questions that they should be asking themselves if they want to look at an Obamacare repeal.
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yea this is pretty normal discussions and shows the maturity of the Republicans. I guess one could wish that they would have resolved some of this stuff earlier, but as long as they get it resolved, im ok with it.

Space Ghost · Jan 27, 2017

The most irresponsible thing is to leave it alone and let it sort itself out. This is of course what liberals want.

Cohete Rojo · Jan 27, 2017

I heard on NPR that something like 50% of Republican-voters either want to keep the ACA or want some kind of replacement similar to it.

pirc1 · Jan 27, 2017

Space Ghost said: ↑

The most irresponsible thing is to leave it alone and let it sort itself out. This is of course what liberals want.
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They have no choice but to repeal, I have high doubts they will replace it with anything.

Space Ghost · Jan 27, 2017

Cohete Rojo said: ↑

I heard on NPR that something like 50% of Republican-voters either want to keep the ACA or want some kind of replacement similar to it.
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Healthcare is political suicide. No matter what you do, its going to be wrong. For the run of the mill politicians, the play it safe method is to avoid it all together.

DaDakota · Jan 27, 2017

They realize that it is super popular with Americans or the idea of it is - so they are treading carefully.......as they don't want to have this majority end in 23 months.

DD

Bandwagoner · Jan 27, 2017

DaDakota said: ↑

They realize that it is super popular with Americans or the idea of it is - so they are treading carefully.......as they don't want to have this majority end in 23 months.

DD
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do you have an individual plan?

robbie380 · Jan 27, 2017

It's so disappointing that people get so locked into a position that they can't adjust. Also, it's disappointing that we keep going for these massive wide sweeping changes to healthcare when we would probably be better off with small incremental ones.

pirc1 · Jan 27, 2017

Space Ghost said: ↑

Healthcare is political suicide. No matter what you do, its going to be wrong. For the run of the mill politicians, the play it safe method is to avoid it all together.
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Single payer, medicare for all but they would never do it until it is absolutely necessary as it cuts too much into the pocket of health care industry.

JayGoogle · Jan 28, 2017

Not surprising, that crown gets really heavy when you hold all 3 branches of government.

ipaman · Jan 28, 2017

This is great news and exactly what politicians should be doing but of course the Washington compost is spinning this as negative. It's so predictable and boring. I for one am glad there are thoughtful discussions occurring before any decisions are made.

TheresTheDagger · Jan 28, 2017

"Secret recordings" from a paper known to host secret fundraisers for Hillary Clinton in conjunction with the DNC.

Seems legit.

tallanvor · Jan 28, 2017

If you are a Democrat you should definitely be rooting for Obamacare to be repealed. Its already a nightmare and only gets worse from here as the death spiral continues.

NewRoxFan · Jan 28, 2017

And yet republicans have been talking about ending ACA for how many years now? You'd think that in all this time at least one of them would have come up with a workable replacement.

MojoMan · Jan 28, 2017

NewRoxFan said: ↑

And yet republicans have been talking about ending ACA for how many years now? You'd think that in all this time at least one of them would have come up with a workable replacement.
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You mean like the plan the Democrat's presented to the American people for Obamacare without having openly asked, struggled with and debated these questions, before it was rammed through Congress in the middle of the night, without ANYONE having read it, the skids greased by open acts of corruption right on the floor of the US Senate?

I do not remember seeing any such comparable plan from the Democrats prior to the passage of Obamacare.

NewRoxFan · Jan 28, 2017

MojoMan said: ↑

You mean like the plan the Democrat's presented to the American people for Obamacare without having openly asked, struggled with and debated these questions, before it was rammed through Congress in the middle of the night, without ANYONE having read it, the skids greased by open acts of corruption right on the floor of the US Senate?
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Interesting comments. But as usual, false. And, dodges the question, after how many years of opposing ACA, why haven't the republicans come up with an acceptable alternative.

But first, the republicans were invited to participate.

In the House, that lesson was not applicable this time; Eric Cantor and House Republicans had already made it crystal clear that they were not cooperating under any circumstances. There, Democrats debated the issue for several months, but mostly amongst themselves, before introducing a detailed bill that emerged from committees in July 2009 and passing it through the House later in the year with just one Republican vote.

But with Obama’s blessing, the Senate, through its Finance Committee, took a different tack, and became the fulcrum for a potential grand bargain on health reform. Chairman Max Baucus, in the spring of 2009, signaled his desire to find a bipartisan compromise, working especially closely with Grassley, his dear friend and Republican counterpart, who had been deeply involved in crafting the Republican alternative to Clintoncare. Baucus and Grassley convened an informal group of three Democrats and three Republicans on the committee, which became known as the “Gang of Six.” They covered the parties’ ideological bases; the other GOPers were conservative Mike Enzi of Wyoming and moderate Olympia Snowe of Maine, and the Democrats were liberal Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and moderate Kent Conrad of North Dakota.

Baucus very deliberately started the talks with a template that was the core of the 1993-4 Republican plan, built around an individual mandate and exchanges with private insurers—much to the chagrin of many Democrats and liberals who wanted, if not a single-payer system, at least one with a public insurance option. Through the summer, the Gang of Six engaged in detailed discussions and negotiations to turn a template into a plan. But as the summer wore along, it became clear that something had changed; both Grassley and Enzi began to signal that participation in the talks—and their demands for changes in the evolving plan—would not translate into a bipartisan agreement.

What became clear before September, when the talks fell apart, is that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had warned both Grassley and Enzi that their futures in the Senate would be much dimmer if they moved toward a deal with the Democrats that would produce legislation to be signed by Barack Obama. They both listened to their leader. An early embrace by both of the framework turned to shrill anti-reform rhetoric by Grassley—talking, for example, about death panels that would kill grandma—and statements by Enzi that he was not going to sign on to a deal. The talks, nonetheless, continued into September, and the emerging plan was at least accepted in its first major test by the third Republican Gang member, Olympia Snowe (even if she later joined every one of her colleagues to vote against the plan on the floor of the Senate.)

Obama could have moved earlier to blow the whistle on the faux negotiations; he did not, as he held out hope that a plan that was fundamentally built on Republican ideas would still, in the end, garner at least some Republican support. He and Senate Democratic leaders held their fire even as Grassley and Enzi, in the negotiations, fought for some serious changes in a plan that neither would ever consider supporting in the end. If Obama had, as conventional wisdom holds, jammed health reform through at the earliest opportunity, there would have been votes in the Senate Finance Committee in June or July of 2009, as there were in the House. Instead, the votes came significantly later.

To be sure, the extended negotiations via the Gang of Six made a big difference in the ultimate success of the reform, but for other reasons. When Republicans like Hatch and Grassley began to write op-eds and trash the individual mandate, which they had earlier championed, as unconstitutional and abominable, it convinced conservative Democrats in the Senate that every honest effort to engage Republicans in the reform effort had been tried and cynically rebuffed. So when the crucial votes came in the Senate, in late December 2009, Harry Reid succeeded in the near-impossible feat of getting all 60 Democrats, from Socialist Bernie Sanders and liberal Barbara Boxer to conservatives Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, and Blanche Lincoln, to vote for cloture, to end the Republican filibuster, and to pass their version of the bill. All sixty were needed because every single Republican in the Senate voted against cloture and against the bill. Was this simply a matter of principle? The answer to that question was provided at a later point by Mitch McConnell, who made clear that the unified opposition was a ruthlessly pragmatic political tactic. He said, “It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out.”
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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/the-real-story-of-obamacares-birth/397742/

The republicans contributed amendments to ACA, both substantive and technical:

That said, some context: Of the 788 amendments filed, 67 came from Democrats and 721 from Republicans. (That disparity drew jeers that Republicans were trying to slow things down. Another explanation may be that they offered so many so they could later claim—as they are now, in fact, claiming—that most of their suggestions went unheeded.) Only 197 amendments were passed in the end—36 from Democrats and 161 from Republicans. And of those 161 GOP amendments, Senate Republicans classify 29 as substantive and 132 as technical.

Yet many of the GOP amendments on this incomplete list do seem pretty substantive. For example, one amendment offered by Oklahoma's Tom Coburn requires members of Congress and their staff to enroll in the government-run health insurance program. Another, sponsored by Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, would "establish an auto advisory council to make recommendations to the Secretary of the Treasury regarding how best to represent the taxpayers of the United States as the majority owner of General Motors." An amendment written by North Carolina's Richard Burr requires that "a private plan would be exempt from any federal or state requirement related to quality improvement and reporting if the community health insurance option is not subject to the specific requirement."

The list goes on. An amendment from Mike Enzi of Wyoming promises "to protect pro-patient plans and prevent rationing." Another of his would "prohibit the government run plan from limiting access to end of life care." An amendment from New Hampshire's Judd Gregg "requires all savings associated with follow-on biologics to go towards deficit reduction."

There are some technical-seeming amendments, too. For example, an amendment from Burr (which was accepted) says, "On line 23 after 'groups' insert 'and reduces the cost of health care.' " Another amendment, proposed by Coburn, "[d]efines [the] average work week as 40 hours."
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...7/this_is_what_bipartisanship_looks_like.html

So returning to the important question facing America TODAY, why don't republicans have an acceptable alternative to ACA?

FranchiseBlade · Jan 28, 2017

MojoMan said: ↑

You mean like the plan the Democrat's presented to the American people for Obamacare without having openly asked, struggled with and debated these questions, before it was rammed through Congress in the middle of the night, without ANYONE having read it, the skids greased by open acts of corruption right on the floor of the US Senate?

I do not remember seeing any such comparable plan from the Democrats prior to the passage of Obamacare.
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What you described never happened. Please read the post that already directs you to the actual facts about what happened with the ACA.

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