Which means they have nothing. Oh, they say they have ideas, but they have nothing that they can discuss. In other words, nothing.
The Weasel of Missouri, Josh Hawley,* thinks this is OK.
“Obamacare is in place; it’s going to be for the foreseeable future,” Hawley said.Great leadership from those guys. Fade back, punt, run away.
Cowards, all of them.
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* Hawley ran for state attorney general in 2016 and won, with lots of promises about what he was going to do for Missourians. But all he really did was position himself for running for the Senate in 2018. If there is any senator who nakedly only gives a shit about himself, it's Hawley.
The Republicans don't have a replacement for the ACA because the ACA is their plan, previously known as Romneycare.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if the Heritage Foundation thought it up itself, or noticed that a similar system works in other countries (Switzerland, I think?) where the government doesn't try to tear it down on a continuous basis, but the "mandate, regulations, and subsidies" approach worked in 2010 because it avoided the political free-fire zone that anything that could be called "single payer" would be subject to in a political environment that was already operating under the "Caucus Room" agreement of total obstruction.
Also, in 2010, the unemployment rate was still around 10% and destroying the entire health insurance industry would have been a hard sell in a struggling economy.
So Mitch McConnell, fresh off of having the Republicans asses handed to them on a plate last November, with their attempt at taking health insurance from 20 million people front and center in the fight, released a statement saying that he looked forward to reading the president's proposal, that is to say, you can shoot yourself in the foot if you want to, but don't expect senate Republicans to participate in the self destruction.
Mitch has an election of his own to win, and this time might not be the cruise that he's used to, if approval numbers mean anything in Kentucky.
Fergus has been caught saying he doesn't think the lawsuit will succeed, which calls into question his actual reason for picking this fight right now.
I don't want to speculate, but none of the obvious reasons reflect well on his job performance as president of the United States.
Perhaps this will soften the political environment for the implementation of a Medicare buy-in plan, but that's not his intention.
-Doug in Oakland
Doug, the ACA was also based on the Republican's health care plan from the 1990s.
ReplyDeleteThat did not matter a whit to the Republicans. In the midst of the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression, the Republicans, as led by Mitch McConnell, were laser-focused on ensuring that President Obama served only one term. They did not give a shit about anything else.
If point of fact, if the economy had slipped into a full-on depression, if tens of millions of people were denied or lost health insurance, that would have been pleasing to Republicans. They only care about themselves, about their party. They have zero loyalty to the nation, regardless of how many flags they hug.
They are truly despicable.