Repeal? No We Never Said That, Don't Be Silly!!

Are we ready to call it #Trumpcare, yet?

“I’m going to make you a promise, you heard the President say it and give direction to the Congress, and it’s just going to start happening in just a few days. We’re gonna repeal Obamacare once and for all and eliminate all its mandates and taxes and intrusion into your personal lives and into the lives of your business.” – Mike Pence, four days ago.

“Whatever challenges we face today, we’re going to stay in the promise-keeping business.” – Mike Pence, four days ago.

The House has released their plan for replacing Obamacare, and if you were expecting some kind of full repeal like what every Republican in the galaxy has been promising for the last thousand years, forget it. This isn’t that.

On Twitter, RedState’s Joe Cunningham dispels the “repeal” notion right away, based just on the actual language.

As in, it AMENDS the Obamacare. Which is not what Republican voters have been promised all this time, now is it?

— Joe Cunningham (@JoePCunningham) March 7, 2017

On Monday night, streiff posted when the news broke that the new bill was out, and on Tuesday morning, folks are reviewing the provisions and, from the conservative right, the reviews are not good.

Phil Klein, writing at The Washington Examiner, explains the scenario we now face.

Barring radical changes [to the proposed legislation], Republicans will not be passing a bill that ushers in a new era of market-based healthcare. In reality, the GOP will either be passing legislation that rests on the same philosophical premise as Obamacare, or will pass nothing at all, and thus keep Obamacare itself in place.

Well that’s just great, isn’t it? Promise-keeping, Mr. Vice-President?

More from Klein:

… the GOP bill preserves much of the regulatory structure of Obamacare; leaves the bias in favor of employer healthcare largely intact; replaces Obamacare’s subsidies with a different subsidy scheme; and still supports higher spending for Medicaid relative to what was the case before Obamacare.

Here is Avik Roy, writing at Forbes:

The AHCA does make an effort to repeal Obamacare’s two costliest regulations: its requirement that plans charge similar premiums to the young and the old (age-based community rating); and its requirement that plans contain generous financial payouts (high actuarial value). So far, so good.

But the plan, due to the reconciliation process, appears to leave the vast majority of Obamacare’s regulations in place.

Again, leaving the Obamacare regulations in place.

And there’s this, from Peter Suderman at Reason:

The bill released tonight attempts to mitigate these problems by capping the refundable credit so that households earning more than $150,000 would be reduced, and individuals making more than $215,000 would get nothing at all. But that still leaves a credit that is refundable for most people, and adds a bit of additional administrative work: Under Obamacare, judging an individual’s employment and income has proven more than a little difficult, and the same would continue to be true here.

So Republicans would be replacing one set of insurance subsidies with another set of insurance subsidies, while killing the individual mandate but leaving many of the law’s insurance regulations intact (with a penalty for insurance gaps). There’s a reason that legislators like Michigan Rep. Justin Amash are already referring to it as “Obamacare 2.0.”

“Obamacare 2.0.”

Same Republicans who will say conservatives are being unrealistic by demanding full repeal now got elected on promises of full repeal.

— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) March 7, 2017

Republicans and conservatives will spend a good deal of today and the next few weeks discussing the bill, what it replaces, and whether it’s an improvement. But there is one thing right now that is absolutely true: despite everything they’ve said to get elected, to pitch themselves and their positions to the American people, despite ironclad promises using specific language, this is not a “full repeal.”

Told you so.