Tag Archives: AHCA

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Politics, the art of the payback

The game of politics can be called the game of payback.

Consider the process that has produced something called the American Health Care Act, the Republican-sponsored overhaul of the Affordable Care Act, which the GOP faithful says it wants to repeal.

In 2009, Republicans griped themselves hoarse over the way congressional Democrats “shoved the ACA down our throats.” They bitched that Democrats crafted the ACA in the “dead of night” and then, using their then-congressional majority, got it approved without a single Republican vote.

Fast-forward to 2017. Republicans now are in charge. They control Congress and one of their own occupies the White House. What do they do? They produce the AHCA also in the “dead of night” and then they try to cram it down Democrats’ throats without knowing how much it’s going to cost.

You see, the Congressional Budget Office — the non-partisan agency — hasn’t “scored” the AHCA. We don’t know how much impact it will have on the annual federal budget deficit.

Was it wrong for Democrats to flummox Republicans with a health care overhaul? Sure. Is it wrong now for Republicans do essentially the same thing to their “friends” on the other side of the aisle? Absolutely.

This is yet another demonstration of how much of a contact sport politics can become.

As for the CBO “scoring” of the AHCA, how about waiting to see how much it would cost Americans before putting it to a vote?

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Politics can be so very brutal among conservatives

Politics is fickle, unfaithful and cruel.

Donald J. Trump scored big election victories in some of the nation’s most conservative congressional districts. And yet … many of those members of Congress representing those districts might be about to turn their guns on the president over his endorsement of what they call a “light” version of the Affordable Care Act.

The American Health Care Act has been put forward. The president is on board with the plan that offers tax credits for people seeking health insurance; it contains many of the features popular with the Affordable Care Act, which the AHCA is designed to replace.

Congress’s more conservative members, though, dislike it. They’re digging in. They’re fighting among themselves, not to mention with the president.

What to do? That’s the problem facing the master negotiator Donald John Trump as he tries to persuade the hard-core among his Republican brethren that the AHCA is worth approving and sending to his desk.

This is a tough sale to make with those among the GOP who just don’t want anything on the books that resembles — even in the slightest sense — something that was enacted at the behest of the former president, Barack Hussein Obama.

We’re likely now to see if the negotiator in chief is as good at this political game as he bragged about incessantly on his way to the White House.

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AHCA may be DOA in U.S. Senate

Hey! Wait a second!

Didn’t the Republican majority in Congress promise to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act? Didn’t they assure us they would produce a plan that would provide health insurance for Americans at a cost they can afford?

Wasn’t that their solemn pledge? Didn’t they all but guarantee it once they won the presidency and retained control of both chambers of Congress?

Hah! Guess again. It seems that the American Health Care Act that the GOP rolled out this week doesn’t go far enough, according to the TEA Party wing of the Republican Party. They might launch a big intraparty fight to derail the AHCA.

These right-wingers are making GOP moderates look better all the time.

House Speaker Paul Ryan assures us that he’ll get 218 votes to approve the AHCA. The problem appears to be in the Senate, which has a very small margin for error among GOP senators. Only three of them need to bolt to drive the whole health care overhaul into the ditch.

There appears to be a rebellion building.

As I look at the proposed legislation, it seems to resemble the Affordable Care Act at some level. It does do away with the “mandate” provision that would penalize Americans who fail to have health insurance. It emphasizes tax credits for Americans seeking to buy insurance.

Some Senate GOP moderates don’t like it, either. There also are the conservatives who want the ACA to be repealed fully and that the AHCA doesn’t wipe the ACA off the face of the planet.

I am one who won’t be disappointed if this GOP overhaul doesn’t work. While I understand that the ACA needs tinkering, some fine-tuning, I would say only that we should simply tinker and fine-tune what we have on the books.

Oh, man … the great Winston Churchill had it right when he declared that democracy was the “worst form of government” ever devised — but was better than anything else.

If only he were around today to watch the U.S. Congress tie itself in knots over this health care insurance matter.

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AHCA to replace ACA … at what cost?

Finally, the Republicans who run the legislative branch of government have produced a replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act.

I will need some time to digest all of it. It’s a complicated issue, one that requires a lot more brain wattage that I can generate at the moment.

It’s called the American Health Care Act. It’s supposed to be better than the ACA — and no, I won’t refer to the ACA by its colloquial name that attaches it to the name of the 44th president of the United States.

Complications abound with AHCA.

It removes the government mandates that require citizens to have health insurance; it relies heavily on tax credits to enable Americans to purchase insurance; it doesn’t monkey around with pre-existing conditions; it allows young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans.

The big question? Its cost.

How will Congress pay for this new program? We haven’t yet heard that explanation.

President Obama has said he’d welcome changes to the ACA that improve it. Yes, we now have a replacement idea on the table. It took Republicans eight years to come up with this alternative. They yapped and yammered during the two terms of the president’s tenure about how “terrible” the ACA was for health care, while pledging to repeal it once they got one of their own into the White House.

Here we are.

The debate will go forward now on whether the AHCA is better than the ACA.

The bottom line — for me, at least — is whether the 20 million or so Americans who now have insurance will be able to keep it at a cost they can afford.