Connect with us

As Senate Moves Quickly to End Obamacare, Resistance to Repeal Builds

Published

on

Even GOP Governors and Lawmakers Want Repeal Efforts to Slow

As the Republican led Senate voted along party lines last week to take the first step toward repealing the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, opposition to a repeal has been building including among some prominent GOP lawmakers and governors. The 51-48 vote was a procedural motion to start Senate debate for a budget resolution that could result in overhauling the law. Broader based legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare would require 60 votes in the Senate, and the GOP doesn’t control enough seats to make that happen or to stop a filibuster by Democrats. However, a budget resolution only requires a simple majority to pass. The vote came after both President Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Mike Pence traveled to Capitol Hill to garner support from their respective parties on the issue.

Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, prominent chairman of the Senate Health Committee, has publicly stated his position that it would be a mistake to repeal Obamacare before the GOP is able to craft a replacement. Another Republican, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul broke with the party, becoming the only Republican to join with the Senate Democrats in opposition.

A spokesperson for Sen. Paul told NCRM Thursday, “The Senator did not support the legislative action as it did not address the greater issue of balancing the underlying budget.”

Not withstanding Alexander’s concerns, in a written statement to NCRM that reiterated his public statement earlier in the week, Senate Budget Committee chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY) said that Republicans are committed to fixing what the GOP sees as a “broken” national health care system.

“Americans face skyrocketing premiums and soaring deductibles,” the Wyoming Republican said. “Insurers are withdrawing from markets across the country, leaving many families with fewer choices and less access to care than they had before – the opposite of what the law promised.”

Enzi did not note that since the inception of Obamacare Republicans have rebuffed attempts by Democrats to tweak portions of the health care law.

The problem that confronts Congressional Republicans is finding and enacting a suitable replacement for the healthcare law, which they initially claimed was unnecessary before it was signed into law in 2010. Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA) speaking to reporters during a news conference Wednesday, said that the GOP may not have enough votes for a replacement to the law.

“They don’t have the votes for a replacement plan,” Pelosi said. “So to repeal and then delay is [an] act of cowardice.”

I am proud to join my colleagues Rep. Jackie Speier and Rep. Barbara Lee this afternoon in the fight against GOP's #MakeAmericaSickAgain agenda.

Posted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Saturday, January 7, 2017

The lack of a suitable replacement plan to replace the present law has long bedeviled GOP lawmakers. President Obama indicated he would consider an endorsement of a repeal, provided that the Republicans can come up with one, and then convince him theirs is a better plan.

“If they can show that they can do it better, cheaper, more effective, provide better coverage, why wouldn’t I be for it?” Obama told web based Vox media Friday. “If in fact there is going to be a massive undoing of what is one-sixth of our economy, then the Republicans need to put forward very specific ideas about how they’re going to do it.”

The President also urged debate comparing any Republican replacement to the current law.

“I am saying to every Republican right now, if you in fact can put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare is doing, I will publicly support repealing Obamacare and replacing it with your plan. But I want to see it first,” he said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7eqoL18zwg 

Former GOP presidential candidate, Ohio’s Governor John Kasich also cautioned Congressional Republicans lawmakers against repealing the law without a replacement.

“There’s room for improvement, but to repeal and not to replace, I just want to know what’s going to happen to all those people who find themselves left out in the cold,” Kasich told reporters Wednesday, according to an audio file provided by the Governor’s Press Office.

Kasich’s office said Friday that more than 700,000 Ohioans have gained coverage from the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. In his remarks, the Governor specifically mentioned those constituents;

“Let’s just say they got rid of it and didn’t replace it with anything, what happens to those 700,000 people?” Kasich said. “What happens to drug treatment, what happens to mental health counseling?”

He also took aim at Republican plans that have been floated to replace the law, noting that there are still no details about a proposed tax credit to help people afford coverage as part of a replacement.

“Now there’s some talk that they would have some sort of a tax credit, OK, well how far does that go?” Kasich said. “There’s a lot of details to be worked out. It’s a serious matter.”

Kasich is not the only GOP governor who supports keeping the healthcare law. Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder has also recently been an Obamacare proponent telling the Detroit News, “I hope they carefully look at the success we’ve had in Michigan.”

Tennessee’s other Republican Senator Bob Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also advised caution as he spoke with reporters Friday morning at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington.

“[It] would be best for our country to go ahead and replace it with something that works and repeal at the same time,” he said.

Corker also urged Democrats “to come to the table to work on a deal on a replacement, including swapping out the employer and individual mandates with auto-enrollment and giving governors more flexibility on Medicaid.”

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tina Rosenberg, a former editorial writer for The New York Times, wrote in an op-ed piece published last week:

“Most endangered are the insurance provisions that have brought coverage to 20 million people. Among them are Medicaid expansion and the requirement to buy insurance — without which the market would collapse.

“The A.C.A. is more than insurance. As the Times reported Monday, the law is leading a transformation of America’s health care system. It’s a change that nearly everyone, Republicans and Democrats, agrees is desperately needed — and for it to happen, the relevant parts of the A.C.A. must be preserved.

“The transformation moves health care away from a fee-for-service model, which pays doctors and hospitals according to the number of procedures they do, toward value-based care, which pays based on what helps patients get better.”

Rosenberg also noted:

“Fee-for-service care encourages providers to do more and do it more expensively. The result is uncoordinated care that does not attack underlying health problems and comes at an enormous cost. Health care now accounts for around 18 percent of America’s gross domestic product. It is pushing state and local governments into near-bankruptcy and neutralizing workers’ raises. And as the first baby boomers are hitting 70, things will only get worse.”

A senior White House official told NCRM that one of the other obstacles confronting Republicans is now that repeal is a distinct possibility, people are becoming more aware of “the real world impacts” that losing the healthcare law’s coverage will have on them and their families. Echoing a long held belief by some political pundits as well as Washington policy makers, he stated, “Before the election the press ignored the real consequences of repealing Obamacare and now is going to have to play catch up to properly inform the public.”

“Let’s look at the largest demographic of the population that will be most adversely affected by repeal – senior citizens,” he said adding, “who voted in large numbers for Donald Trump and the GOP.”

“For the over 57 million senior citizens and disabled Americans who have been covered under Obamacare, and who are currently paying $700 less in premiums and cost sharing than they would without it, they’re looking at higher premiums, deductibles and cost-sharing. But where it really hits them in their wallet is that “the Donut Hole” will be back. This was a factor after a person had exceeded their ‘specified coverage’ and were 100% responsible for the cost of their medications.”

Using the examples of expensive medications such as those for cancer, heart disease, etc., he pointed out that nearly 11 million seniors and disabled had saved more that $2100 a person for those drugs under Obamacare. He then added that screenings for breast cancer, colon cancer, heart disease, diabetes, which are currently covered at no cost, will revert to an out-of-pocket expenditure, which in many cases of fixed or lower income persons would be cost prohibitive.

Besides of those “people” factors, GOP lawmakers need to consider the fiscal cost and drain to the federal budget, he added.

“A full repeal of Obamacare will cost approximately $350 billion over the next ten years,” he said. “When the Affordable Care Act was first enacted it didn’t add to the federal deficit instead it actually boosted revenues slightly.”

The current law affects the federal budget in three ways, as CNN Money reported last week:

“Coverage provisions, which include the individual and employer mandates, subsidies and Medicaid expansion.”

“Taxes and fees levied on high-income Americans, insurers, providers and others, as well as the Cadillac tax on high-cost insurance plans.” 

Finally, the “Medicare components, such as slowing the growth of provider rates and lowering payments to Medicare Advantage insurers.”

According to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, removing all three components would blow a hole in the budget even before the GOP come up with a replacement plan, which would also then need to be funded.

The American Medical Association, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, has also spoken out in a letter to Republican leaders urging them to take a different approach.

“Policymakers should lay out for the American people, in reasonable detail, what will replace current policies,” the letter reads. “Patients and other stakeholders should be able to clearly compare current policy to new proposals so they can make informed decisions about whether it represents a step forward in the ongoing process of health reform.”

The person who will ultimately decide how quickly and in what form Obamacare repeal and, possibly, replace, comes, is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (photo). Sen. McConnell on Sunday said, “There ought not to be a great gap” between repeal and replace, but would not define just how long Americans will be without coverage.

Brody Levesque is the Chief Political Correspondent for The New Civil Rights Movement.
You may contact Brody at Brody.Levesque@thenewcivilrightsmovement.com

You can respond directly to Mitch McConnell by sending your comments to him on Twitter: @SenateMajLdr and @McConnellPress. He is on Facebook, and his office information can be found here and here. You can also call the US Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for any Senator including Sen. McConnell.
(Why are we including this information?)

To comment on this article and other NCRM content, visit our Facebook page. To contact NCRM directly you can email us.

Image via Facebook 

Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

OPINION

‘Have to Get Back to Law and Order’: Trump Declares at NYPD Officer’s Wake

Published

on

Donald Trump attended the wake of the slain New York City police officer who was shot and killed while conducting a traffic stop this week. The four-times indicted ex-president demanded America “get back to law and order,” barely days after a New York judge imposed a gag order in the case where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election,” according to the New York District Attorney.

That damaging information included hush money payments to several women including an adult film actress.

“We have to stop it,” Trump said Thursday, speaking before the cameras about crime as he stood under an umbrella in front of police officers. “We have to stop, we have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often.”

“Police are the greatest people we have. There’s nothing and there’s nobody like them. And this should never happen,” Trump said as he lamented how repeat offenders “don’t learn because they don’t respect.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“We’ve got to toughen it up. We’ve got to strengthen it up. It should never be allowed things like they shouldn’t take place and to take place so often,” said Trump, who is out on bail and currently faces 88 felony charges after three were dropped.

The Trump campaign announced that the ex-president had been invited to attend the wake.

“President Trump is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, according to The Daily Beast.

The Associated Press added that “Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, called for shoplifters to be shot immediately and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.”

“He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.”

Earlier on Thursday NBC News reported on Trump’s mischaracterizations of crime.

“Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and ‘migrant crime,'” the network noted. “Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.”

READ MORE: ‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

“But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels,” NBC added. “FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.”

Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.

Continue Reading

OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

Published

on

The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

Continue Reading

News

Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

Published

on

Michigan MAGA Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock is under fire after claiming three buses were “loaded up with illegal invaders.” The buses, according to multiple reports, were actually loaded with the Gonzaga University basketball team arriving for March Madness.

“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Rep. Maddock wrote on social media Wednesday evening, tagging far-right former U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump and is now the state’s Republican Party chair.

Informed of his error on social media, Rep. Maddock doubled down, and attacked.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“Probably teams for the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 playing at LCA on Friday and Sunday,” a user on X wrote.

“Sure kommie. Good talking point,” Maddock quickly shot back.

ABC affiliate WXYZ executive producer Maxwell White, responding to the Maddock’s original post wrote: “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted.”

“This is a wild tweet,” White added, before adding more evidence.

Hoekstra, who was accused of using racism and xenophobia to win his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat (he lost), did not respond directly to Maddock but did repost the apparently false claim.

Michigan State Senate Democratic Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow denounced Maddock’s claim as “dangerous.”

Maddock’s remark also made the national stage when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell responded.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“Hey Einstein,” the California Democrat wrote, “your state is hosting the Sweet 16. Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

In 2021 The Washington Post reported, “Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.”

See the social media posts above 0r at this link.

 

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.