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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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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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3 days ago

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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