Should-Read: Andrew Prokop: Republicans in Utter Disarray on Obamacare Repeal
Should-Read: Republican ACA Repeal Circular Firing Squad of Flying Attack Monkeys Lollapalooza:
Scott Lemieux: There Will Never Be A Republican Replacement for the ACA, Cont’d: “There’s no alternative to the ACA that 1) could get a non-trivial amount of Republican support and…
…2) wouldn’t be massively unpopular, because kicking millions of people off of insurance while making insurance much worse for many of those who still have it can’t be made popular. Having a clown without even the most basic understanding of the issues involved in the White House doesn’t help, but the fundamental dilemma would be there no matter what.
Andrew Prokop: Republicans in Utter Disarray on Obamacare Repeal: “Congressional Republicans went off to Philadelphia…
…hop[ing] to make at least some progress toward… repealing and replacing Obamacare…. The party remains divided, uncertain, and deeply concerned about how to move forward…. [Nearly all] questions remains completely unsettled… [with] at least some within the party have grave concerns about all…. Republican House members representing blue states appear to be particularly worried…. Trump’s top domestic policy staffer, Andrew Bremberg… [spoke] in only the vaguest banalities and broadest strokes, offering no substantive guidance whatsoever besides saying that HHS Secretary nominee Tom Price is a “compassionate” guy and a good doctor…. Even though… Republicans in Congress don’t have to defend any specific points that are unpopular, they’re clearly worried already…
Michael Hiltzik: U.S. judge finds that Aetna deceived the public about its reasons for quitting Obamacare: “Aetna claimed… it was pulling out of… Obamacare individual insurance… [as] a business decision…
…it was simply losing too much money on the Obamacare exchanges. Now a federal judge has ruled that that was a rank falsehood…. Aetna threatened federal officials with the pullout before the lawsuit was filed, and followed through on its threat once it was filed…. Aetna executives had moved heaven and earth to conceal their decision-making process from the court… by discussing the matter on the phone rather than in emails, and by shielding what did get put in writing with the cloak of attorney-client privilege, a practice [Judge] Bates found came close to “malfeasance”…
Matt Lewis: Maybe, on Obamacare, Republicans Should Just Punt: “I’ve been through all the conservative alternatives, and many of them have good components…
…But it’s like a novice trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube. Every conceivable scheme or solution creates new problems…. The most plausible (and simplistic) plan would (A) retain the employer-based system (replacing the “Cadillac tax” with a better designed upper limit), (B) provide tax credits for people outside the system, and (C) provide Medicaid for everyone who can’t afford health insurance.
“You can look at this,” Capretta conceded, “and say, ‘Boy, doesn’t this sound like the Affordable Care Act’? And the answer is ‘yes.’”…By winning the presidential election, Republicans are now like the dog that caught the car. “It feels like Bush’s Social Security all over again,” one senior industry official told me. “It’s really hard to see how this ends up with as many people being covered at the same or lower costs. It’s a mess.” Even that may be a best-case scenario…. Republicans didn’t repeal Social Security. There is always the danger that this could go catastrophically wrong. Should Republicans actually kick off a new administration by engaging in a fool’s errand that is almost guaranteed to backfire?…