Paul Ryan: Obamacare repeal is first priority under Trump

Here's the problem. The rules of the game have been re-written. Republicans savaged the ACA for 6 years and turned it into a monster that they have to take ownership of. If we want healthy political parties that actually have to accept the consequences of their actions, then the Republicans alone have to own the solution. The Democrats can't bail them out with votes this time around because it allows Republican legislators to vote against their own plan (just like they vote against debt ceiling increases and hope that Democrats bail them out).

I want a return of two healthy political parties that actually debate the merits of policy options and make genuine efforts to address challenges that our country faces. The Republicans have spent 8 years opposing whatever the president proposed (even if it meant flip-flopping on previously held positions) and have largely gotten immense results. They control all 3 branches and a majority of state governments. At some point, caustic behavior has to have a consequence and so I hope and expect Democrats to oppose bad legislation and let Republicans alone own their own decisions.

Republicans have gotten to spend 8 years whining about every policy that the Obama administration has passed or even suggested without having to actually own any policy proposals of their own. Hell every time they even tried to propose a policy it blew up in their face (2012 was largely won on that stupid Paul Ryan budget that wanted to completely overhaul Medicare). So now they get to own those bad decisions and the country can finally take off the blinders.

And hey, the Republicans will propose good legislation every now and then and I would hope that unlike the Republicans, the Democrats won't filibuster it out of spite. But I have no interest in seeing a Democratic minority vote for bad Republican bills like a weak ACA replacement just because the country needs some grown ups to vote on a bill to protect Republicans from having to vote on their own proposals. The Democrats can't be the ones to lend Republicans votes anymore just because they can't get their own caucus in line.

 

This.

 

The Repubs have hung themselves with their own rope.

Their substantive criticisms of the ACA are that it covers too few people and costs too much - basically, they are saying they want to EXPAND it.

Their tactic for years has to been to demonize it and chant REPEAL over and over again.

Obviously, you can't repeal something and simultaneously expand it. They can't accomplish their goals.

I mean, you COULD - really, you could repeal it and then re-implement a larger version of it- but this GOP couldn't do it

 

In what way did the Republicans "savage" the ACA? They had nothing at all to do with it. All they've tried to do is repeal the god-awful legislation and the president has prevented that from happening. How is that turning it into a monster? It's a monster because it was stupid to begin with.

 

yup

Its time for the right to put up or shut up on Healthcare.

 

Breaking update with comments from Speaker Paul Ryan.

Americans will be able to keep their health conditions under GOP plan.

“Let’s say you have lymphoma. Under our plan, you can still have lymphoma. You could even expand on that into other forms of cancer. In fact, for the vast majority of Americans, repealing Obamacare will actually increase the number of significant medical conditions available to them.” Ryan added that under the new system, millions of Americans would also see a 100 percent reduction in their health insurance premiums, copays, and coverage.

 

here's the thing. If you poll Americans on "Obamacare," you find that majority want to repeal it.

But when you break up the ACA into its component pieces, you find a different result. You find majorities approving of things like federal subsidies on the insurance exchange, medicaid expansion, a ban on pre-existing conditions, no cost preventative care, etc.. Republicans managed to turn public opinion against a health care overhaul but when you ask voters to actually think about the changes that made up that overhaul, you get a different result.

And for years, Republicans could get away with this. They afterall didn't have to actually legislature. They could happily demonize the ACA knowing that they wouldn't have to own their rhetoric.

Well that's about to change in a few days. Republicans now get to own their rhetoric and start confronting the reality of policymaking and health care reform. Here's one thing the ACA did do (even if it gets repealed), it made it impossible to do nothing. Republicans can't go back to the era before the ACA. Republicans could demonize the ACA but they couldn't demonize the idea of health care reform and its proven out by the fact that when you poll Americans on the components that make up the ACA, most pieces (outside of the individual mandate) earn a majority of Americans approval.

But this conondrum is not for the Democrats to figure out or even own. Republicans get to work that out while everyone else sits around watching them fumble around with the rubik's cube that is health care reform.

 

None of this answers the very first question and explains how the Republicans "savaged" the ACA. The failure of the ACA is 100% on the Democrats who proposed it and passed it all by themselves. Now that it has proven to be awful legislation you can't blame that on public opinion or anything Republicans did. The Democrats have to own the failure of Obamacare no matter what Republicans do or don't do.

 

1.) They sabotaged the risk corridors
2.) 19 states, most if not all due to the right, did not expand Medicaid, which was a key component.

 

If the whole thing was based on others bailing it out then it was pretty short sighted, no?

Also, it's pretty laughable to suggest that those 2 things would actually make the abomination that is Obamacare a success. It was doomed to failure from the start, exactly like everyone said it was.....and that's where the Democrats sunk all of their political capital, smart.

 

The whole thing was not based on others bailing it out, so no, it was not pretty short sighted.

I guess it depends on what you think success is.

It hasn't failed. It works, it is just alot more expensive than it needs to be because the Republicans sabotaged it.

 

LOL, you guys are hilarious. When the thing everyone said would fail ends up failing in exactly the way everyone said it would fail, you look to blame others who had nothing at all to do with it rather than to accept that it was just a stupid idea to begin with......I think we all know why you guys keep losing elections with that mindset.

 

Did it actually fail though? More Americans are covered than ever. You might cite health insurance premiums going up but those were going up anyway and the employer insurance market is distinctly different from the individual market. Plus the major reforms that might've impacted employer premiums never went into effect (employer mandate and cadillac tax).

Premiums were rising rapidly before the ACA. At least, now there are some newer regulations that make getting coverage substantially easier. I'm not suggesting the ACA is perfect by any means but how is it a "failure?" Failure would imply that it made the system worse than it was previously and there's no way you can say things are worse now than they used to be with a straight face.

 

Does anyone have a graph of average premiums before and after ACA? I want to know if the curve after the ACA was fully implemented is increasing by being concave up or down(second order derivative).

 

More people are paying for insurance, sure, but that doesn't mean more people have access to healthcare.....it just means that you've successfully taken more from the people. Premiums were rising before the ACA, now they are rising even faster. Plenty of people get money jacked from their checks only to still not have access to healthcare due to not being able to afford to use their insurance. On top of that, there are plenty of people who have had their work affected by the ACA in that some are now part time instead of full time to go around how the ACA would negatively impact small businesses.

In all, yeah, it's absolutely a failure with almost no positives and just tons of negatives.....and the system is going to collapse one way or the other with company after company trying to get the hell out of the market. The only way it's been a success is that it has popularized the idea of a ridiculously expensive "single payer" system, which many said was the original goal of passing something everyone knew would fail.

 

Bobby, with nuance I implore to make a convincing argument why a service that has mostly inelastic demand ought to be in the free market.

Do I expect a nuanced answer? No. But let's see what you got.

Oh, and if someone who isn't lucky enough to be blocked by Bobby post this question to him.

Let's test his knowledge. I want to see if Bobby can be involved in a nuanced debate.

 

Test his knowledge? Are you kidding me? Bobby is an idiot.

Outside of a few canned responses, he has nothing to say, just repeats the same three paragraphs over and over again.

 

You do realize you are just regurgitating talking points that aren't true, right? Premiums are not rising faster than pre-ACA. People do have access to the benefits of healthcare long before deductibles, through lower negotiated rates, co-pays, and free preventive care. And there's no evidence of any noticable move to PT work from FT work compared to previous trends. That said, 20 million people now have health care that didn't have it before. People now have the option to be self-employed due to access to healthcare instead of being tied to jobs that didn't make sense for them. Overall health care spending has slowed over the past 8 years compared to the previous few decades. Insurance premiums are rising, but taxpayer dollars spent on emergency care (local and state government) is dropping.

Like your knowledge on most other subjects, nothing you actually believe about our healthcare system matches the reality as demonstrated by actual data.

 

You are simply wrong.....but it's understandable given your political leanings. You'll fight to the death to try and prove that the last 8 years weren't a complete waste....and you've been told to stand up for the failed nonsense called Obamacare so you are doing like any good partisan would. Your blind loyalty is admirable, but misplaced. Anyway, this whole discussion is pointless given that the ACA is going to finally be put out of its misery sooner rather than later and trying to re-write history isn't going to save it.

 

Data. Real data. Take a look:

http://static3.businessinsider.com/...2-1135/screen shot 2016-12-02 at 40454 pm.png

Notice the light blue line - that is total growth in health spending in this country, updated through 2015 which is the most recent data available. Even with the uptick in 2014 and 2015, it's slower than at any point in the last 30 years. 2010-2013 had the absolute slowest spending growth in a generation. This is all despite the fact that the population is aging, which *should* increase healthcare spending.

You are simply willfully ignorant of the facts and the data, as you are all on virtually all subjects. Yelling and screaming about partisanship and other nonsense does nothing to further your case. The data simply proves you wrong. There's a reason you never cite anything at all and just spew nothing but verbal diarrhea.