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

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

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News

Trump Witness Turns ‘Strawberry Red’ After Judge’s Scalding Scolding

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57 mins ago

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May 20, 2024

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New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, after becoming visibly angered by Trump defense witness Robert Costello, cleared the courtroom of the jury and the press before admonishing the “MAGA-friendly lawyer” Monday afternoon in the ex-president’s criminal “hush money” trial.

Calling it a “brawl,” The Daily Beast set the scene: “After Costello, a former prosecutor, was reprimanded for delivering outbursts in the court whenever he was interrupted or told not to answer a question that had been objected to and sustained, Costello began to stare down the judge.”

Before the reprimand, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported: “Twice now the judge has sustained an objection and Costello answered regardless. Judge Merchan addresses him directly to not answer if he’s sustained the objection. ‘Jesus,’ Costello mutters after it happens again. ‘I’m sorry,’ the judge, visibly annoyed, says to him. ‘I’m sorry?'”

And then, the admonition.

READ MORE: ‘Wack Pack’: Questions Swirl Over ‘Trump Uniforms’ and Who’s Funding ‘Weird’ Trial Surrogates

“I’d like to discuss proper decorum in the courtroom,” Judge Merchan said, according to Collins. “If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side eye and you don’t roll your eyes.”

Collins added: “Then in a raised voice, Merchan asks, ‘Are you staring me down right now?!'”

“The jury was NOT in the room for this,” Collins added. “Merchan sent them out, then admonished Costello, then when he was staring him down, Merchan became furious and cleared the courtroom. So the jury witnesses none of this. (And the press missed whatever was said in the interim.)”

Here’s how it went down, according to MSNBC host and legal contributor Katie Phang.

“Judge Merchan is ANGRY,” she observed, before reporting the dialogue:

“MERCHAN: ‘I’d like to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom’
MERCHAN: ‘If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t say ‘Jeez’ ‘
MERCHAN: You don’t say ‘strike it’ because I’m the only one who can strike it.
MERCHAN: ‘You don’t give me side eye and you don’t roll your eyes’
COSTELLO: I understand.”

Phang added, “When the media were allowed back in, Costello is seated at the witness stand looking decidedly chastened. Merchan looks calm.”

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports the judge didn’t calmly just clear the courtroom:

MSNBC legal contributor Lisa Rubin called it, “one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen in court.”

READ MORE: Law ‘Requires’ Alito and Thomas to Recuse Says Former Federal Prosecutor

And while CNN’s Collins noted the jury was not in the courtroom for exchange, Phang reports: “Although the dressing down of Costello took place outside of earshot of the jury, they witnessed firsthand Costello’s demeanor and petulance and heard firsthand his quips and remarks from the witness stand. Perhaps Costello just reinforced to the jury why Cohen didn’t want to keep Costello as his lawyer…Costello is pandering for an audience of one: Trump.”

MSNBC legal analyst Kristy Greenberg noted, “Michael Cohen was respectful. Bob Costello is acting like a clown. Jurors will notice and this will hurt Trump. Any concerns that jurors may have had about Cohen have now been overshadowed by Costello’s disrespect to the judge right in front of their faces.”

Lowell also reported after that the reprimand, “Costello is so red in the face he resembles a strawberry.”

See the social media post above or at this link.

 

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OPINION

‘Wack Pack’: Questions Swirl Over ‘Trump Uniforms’ and Who’s Funding ‘Weird’ Trial Surrogates

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3 hours ago

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May 20, 2024

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Trump trial watchers are raising questions over the increasingly large number of elected Republicans and big-name allies showing up at the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building to show support for the indicted ex-president, often giving angry and factually inaccurate speeches before the cameras, or standing behind the defendant in the background as he delivers his rants to reporters.

They are usually all men, and usually all dressed just as Donald Trump does: blue suit, white shirt, red tie.

Public Notice founder Aaron Rupar on Monday, observed, “they’re all in Trump costumes again. how cute.”

Questions about their “uniforms,” and more importantly, who is funding and organizing their travel, are being raised.

Media critic Jennifer Schulze, a former Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism, commented: “The trump uniforms angle is flying way too low beneath the mainstream news radar. The same is true for how this weird courtroom guest star show is being organized & financed.”

READ MORE: Why Alito’s ‘Stop the Steal’ Flag Story Just Fell Apart

And they are being called “uniforms.”

Filmmaker and podcaster Andy Ostroy declared, “I’m sorry, but all these #Trump capos showing up each day at the trial dressed exactly the same as The Godfather in blue suit and red tie is not only creepy AF but is a chilling foreshadowing of the fascist uniform-wearing government they’re jonesin’ to be a part of…”

Talk radio host Joan Esposito also asked who’s paying for these appearances: “Is the trump campaign paying for these surrogates to fly to & from nyc? If not, who is?”

Political commentator Bob Cesca remarked, “Trump’s fanboys are like the Wack Pack from the Stern show circa 1990.”

Monday’s star surrogates included South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, an election denier who had supported overturning the 2020 presidential election and signed onto what has been called a “false and frivolous” lawsuit attempting to overturn the results.

Also, Republican U.S. Reps. Eric Burlison, Andrew Clyde, Mary Miller, and Keith Self. And John Coale from the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Trump attorney and GOP attorney general candidate Will Scharf, convicted felon and Trump pardon recipient Bernie Kerik, Trump loyalist and former Trump administration official Kash Patel, and others.

READ MORE: Law ‘Requires’ Alito and Thomas to Recuse Says Former Federal Prosecutor

Op-ed columnist Terry Cowgill last week called them “manservants…standing at attention like automatons.”

“Scary and very very strange” was actress and activist Mia Farrow’s observation last week.

Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast, an MSNBC political analyst, last week asked, “Why did they all wear the same outfit?”

The Biden campaign was only too happy to post this video last week:

See the social media posts and videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Partisan Insurrectionist’: Calls Mount for Alito’s Ouster After ‘Stop the Steal’ Scandal

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News

Law ‘Requires’ Alito and Thomas to Recuse Says Former Federal Prosecutor

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7 hours ago

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May 20, 2024

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U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have no choice but to observe federal law and recuse themselves from cases involving the 2020 presidential election, according to an attorney who served as a federal prosecutor for 30 years, while a noted constitutional law expert is warning Justice Alito “may be responsible for delaying” the Court’s decision on Donald Trump’s claims of absolute immunity.

Their remarks come as Americans are waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to issue its decision on Donald Trump’s claim of absolute and total immunity from prosecution.

“The Supreme Court, as led by insurrection advocates Alito & Thomas, has caught & killed Trump’s prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The impartiality of Thomas & Alito ‘might reasonably be questioned’ so the federal law REQUIRES their recusal. Period. Full stop,” wrote Glenn Kirschner, now an NBC News/MSNBC legal analyst.

Kirschner posted text from federal law, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 455, which reads: “Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

READ MORE: ‘Partisan Insurrectionist’: Calls Mount for Alito’s Ouster After ‘Stop the Steal’ Scandal

The renewed interest in both far-right justices comes after Friday’s New York Times bombshell report that revealed a symbol of January 6 insurrectionists, the “Stop the Steal” flag, which is the U.S. Stars and Stripes flying upside down, was flown at Justice Alito’s home just days before President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

Justice Alito claimed his wife was responsible for flying the American flag in that manner, which is also used to indicate a situation of dire or extreme distress. He claimed she had done so after an altercation with a neighbor, who had a “F*** Trump” sign on their lawn that could be seen by children awaiting the school bus. But those claims seemed to fall apart after sleuths noted because of COVID schools were operating virtually, so there were no school buses running, and neighbors did not remember what allegedly was extreme neighborhood drama.

On Friday, Laurence Tribe, University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, a constitutional law scholar and professor who has argued three dozen times before the Supreme Court, told CNN (video below) he believes Justice Alito must recuse.

“I do. I don’t think there’s any question about it. It’s in many ways, more serious than what we’ve seen with Justice Thomas. At least Justice Thomas could say that, ‘my wife Ginny has her own separate career. We don’t talk about the cases.’ You may believe that or you may not, but that’s very different from what’s going on with Justice Alito. He’s not saying, ‘My wife has her own separate career.’ He’s throwing her under the bus and blaming her for what is on his house, his flagpole. It’s his flag malfunction. It’s his upside down flag and everyone knows that the upside down the flag, which the United States Code says should be flown that way only in cases of absolute emergency as a kind of SOS, was in this case, a symbol of the claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.”

“It was the banner of the insurrectionists,” Tribe continued. “And I’m reminded of something that the late Justice Scalia said in the opinion he wrote in 1987, he said, ‘you cannot expect to ride with the cops if you cheer for the robbers.’ In this case, Justice Alito expects to preside over a decision about whether there wasn’t it direction and who was responsible for it. And whether Donald Trump who has been charged with involvement in trying to obstruct the operations of government and the transfer of power is immune, or if cases before the court, he’s obviously not qualified to sit in this case.”

READ MORE: ‘Mouths of Sauron’: Critics Blast ‘Mobster Tactic’ of Trump Surrogates ‘Violating’ Gag Order

Like Kirschner, Tribe pointed to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 455, saying, “28 US Code section 455 says that any federal judge or justice must – not may, but must – recuse him or herself in any case where either that justice or the justice’s spouse has any skin in the game. There’s no distance here between Mr. Alito and Mrs. Alito. It’s clear that whatever offensive sign was involved, that dispute between neighbors trivializes what’s involved here.”

On the Supreme Court’s pending decision on Trump’s immunity claims, Tribe added, Justice Alito “may be responsible for delaying it.”

“After all, the protocol within the court is the different justices dissenting and Alito is probably writing a dissent from a rejection of the extreme claim of absolute immunity. That didn’t seem to gain traction with the court. If a justice is dissenting, you wait till the dissent is done before announcing the case. So by delaying this immunity decision so long that a trial can’t occur before the election, the effect may be to give de facto immunity to the former president, who if he wins the election will pick an attorney general who will dismiss the case. So ultimate accountability is very much on the line.”

As for Justice Thomas, back in March of 2022, The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer wrote: “Legal Scholars Are Shocked By Ginni Thomas’s ‘Stop the Steal’ Texts,” which also read: “Several experts say that Thomas’s husband, the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, must recuse himself from any case related to the 2020 election.”

And in June of 2022, former Bush 43 chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, also posting that federal law, wrote: “Justice Thomas’s participation in Dobbs means Ginni Thomas was not receiving payment from persons seeking reverse of Roe. Right?”

He was referring to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, coincidentally written by Justice Alito, which overturned five decades of civil rights law and removed abortion as a constitutionally-protected right.

“We have no idea who’s paying Ginni Thomas,” he continued, referring to Clarence Thomas’s spouse, who also alleged worked to overturn the 2020 election. “Justice Thomas refuses to recuse from any cases because of her. This conflict of interest is unworkable.”

Watch Professor Tribe below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Not Weighing in on That’: Republicans Refuse to Pull Support for Trump as Trial Nears End

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