Yet another White House delay for the smelly turd that is Obamacare

Congress didn't opt out, they actually opted IN lol. (to the subsidy)

I sure wish someone would make me eligible for the subsidy!

 

You've been hoodwinked bigtexx and not by the liberal media...



Having failed to block Obamacare in Congress in 2010, or to get the Supreme Court to throw it out in 2012, or to beat Obama himself last November, conservative groups have hit upon two last-ditch methods of preventing a large new entitlement program from becoming an entrenched fact of American life. One is Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s pledge to refuse to fund the discretionary functions of the federal government unless the law is repealed. The other is an effort to bring the law down at the grassroots by encouraging citizen nonparticipation. Or as Dean Clancy of Freedomworks put it: “BURN YOUR OBAMACARE CARD.”

As there are no special cards associated with the Affordable Care Act, this plan will not work on a literal level. But on a practical level, though the odds are slim, it just might succeed. But if that boycott doesn’t succeed, the only people conservative leaders are going to end up hurting are their own followers.

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No, it's not true. Congress had goofy rules that were put in as a poison pill to the bill by Chuck Grassley. The Grassley provision essentially prevented the government from providing insurance to staffers. That's not how it works for anyone else - employers are not banned from providing insurance anywhere else. As such, Congressional staffers were faced with a unique circumstance that made no sense and did not apply to other types of employees. The change to the rule simply fixed that. Congress did not opt-out, as giddyup suggested.

Stuff like this is nonsense and shows you're just buying into whatever you read on the internet from crazy people. The bill was developed over the course of a year. It was voted on over the course of weeks (amendments, etc). Sure, if you didn't pay attention at all during the entire debate and didn't read the bill until the very final i's were dotted and t's were crossed, you'd have 2 days to read it. But anyone who actually showed interest and paid attention had months to read and research it.

Besides which, the vast majority of people voting against the bill - Olympia Snowe was probably the only exception in the Senate - had already said that they were voting against it months before the final version was ever out there. So to claim that it was a reading or research issue is pure nonsense. They had decided their vote without regard to content or specifics.

 

Like immigration, the GOP had a nice period of time where they were fully in charge - and they came up with exactly nothing. Here's Newt, today:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/newt-gingrich-gop-health-care-plan-95540.html?hp=r8

Newt Gingrich: No GOP health care plan



Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Wednesday told party chairs and operatives at the Republican National Committee summer meeting that the GOP has “zero” ideas for replacing Obamacare, according to a report.

“I will bet you, for most of you, you go home in the next two weeks when your members of Congress are home, and you look them in the eye and you say, ‘What is your positive replacement for Obamacare?’ They will have zero answer,” Gingrich told the Boston crowd, said the report from CNN.

Gingrich said the party has a “very deep problem” with a culture that promotes negativity.

“We are caught up right now in a culture, and you see it every single day, where as long as we are negative and as long as we are vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don’t have to learn anything,” Gingrich said.

...

 

He's absolutely right. I just had this argument with someone today. The GOP is so consumed by tea party small ball politics that wins them volatile House seats that they can't offer an effective governance alternative and they can't win the big ones.

 

It's downright pathetic. They need people with ideas and alternatives, a roadmap for the future of the party, not the small ball BS you mention.

 

They have a few, I think - Daniels, Christie, Rubio, etc. The problem is that the Tea Party hates them all if they propose solutions to anything - just look at what happened to tea party darling Rubio for daring to try to work on immigration.

Rand Paul is interesting because, while I think his ideas will be crazy, he strikes me as someone that will propose actual ideas. It's also hard for me to see the tea party turning on him, so he's currently near the top of my list for people who can actually win the GOP nomination in 2016 (he'd likely get obliterated in a general election, though).

 

Paul would not get my vote. Christie, on the other hand, would. Christie will propose solutions that are conservative fiscally and are palatable to moderates on both sides of the aisle.

 

I agree. I think Christie would be terrible at the "feel your pain" / empathy aspect of being President, but he'd be fantastic and working to generate good moderate solutions to major issues.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure people like you are in the majority when it comes to the GOP primaries.

 

Sadly, I fear you are correct. If the GOP runs another hard right candidate, I will write in a vote for my favorite candidate...me.

 

I vote for Refman in the Republican primary!

 

Thank you. It appears that Refmania has begun. :grin:

 

I'd vote for the Refman/Madmax ticket;

 

Yes, they did. Unless Congressman Burgess lied to my face.

I haven't kept up with this thread at all, just randomly clicked on the last page and saw a response to something I don't really even remember saying. But I don't get any of my info from crazy people on the internet, or the radio, etc. Those were statements directly from a Congressman, not taken out of context, not in an interview. It was reiterated again last night from another Congressman Burton or Barton (can't remember). And they did not have weeks to break down the law, they were making changes over and over, even Pelosi didn't read the bill. She said there was time for that later. It was written by special interest groups. Not a single governor from either party was invited for input on the state exchanges.

Not pure nonsense. It is the truth. Sorry your version of the truth differs from mine, but I trust my sources.

 

What is your point? I am just as irritated at anyone else at how the Republicans are acting, doesn't excuse the mess of policy the Democrats are pushing for though. I totally agree that Republicans haven't offered any reasonable, actually no alternative at all. At least they have not put anything in writing, to my knowledge. I don't keep up with the federal government as much though, my job is in state government.

However, last night I was at an event with a congressman who said that he and his colleagues are in support of reform, and that the current immigration bill has some good things in it, but it has a lot of bad things. From what I took away, they want to focus on cleaning up the visa program, securing the border (which he admitted was difficult and could never be totally secure/also said he would require it to be a precondition), and a couple other things I don't remember off the top of my head and I didn't write down because it was federal. I do remember him saying they had discussed an alternative, but knew they couldn't get it through the Senate at this time (I really can't remember if that comment was about immigration or the ACA).

 

If he told you otherwise, then he's either ignorant or lying. It's just not true. The provision that requires Congress to use the insurance exchange is still in force.

The issue with the Grassley provision was that the government is considered a large employer (50 or more employees) and large employers cant pick up a part or the entirety of a premium of insurance purchased through an exchange. Large employers have to go directly to insurance companies and buy group plans but since the law forced Congress to use the exchange, it created a scenario where members of Congress and staffers had to buy insurance off the exchanges without the government helping to pay any of the premium.

 

I didn't say it wasn't in force, did I? Maybe I didn't clarify. He said the Democrats met with Obama and were upset about the provision, and were forcing him to instruct the office of personnel management to write the rules so that they were opted out. He said he and other Republicans would not going to allow this to happen.

 

The way the law is written there are plenty of people who won't get subsidies from the government OR have employer sponsored insurance. It's too bad they don't have someone to make amendments to this law to get them a subsidy.