And key Republican leaders are confident that pressure will eventually weaken the holdouts. Old-timers recall the 2003 vote on the Medicare prescription drug benefit, during which leaders held open the vote for almost three hours while a whip team blocked all the exits from the House floor until they had twisted enough arms.
.. Yet the debate over the repeal bill is the latest sign that Republicans and Democrats are miles apart on health care, and there’s little indication the two parties can bridge that gap anytime soon. In a floor speech Thursday, Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) trashed Republicans’ work on health care, calling their efforts not just a “crumbling and destruction of health care, but also a crumbling of our democracy.”
.. Do nothing and blame the Democrats
Trump said it himself just weeks ago: “I say to Republicans, if you really want to do something good, don’t do anything. … Let it be a disaster.”
Republicans could shelve their quest to overhaul the health care system, hope Obamacare premiums keep spiking and insurers keep fleeing marketplaces and bet they won’t pay the political price in 2018. Trump has already expressed his misgivings about taking ownership of health reform, and privately assured conservative groups that he can pin the whole mess on Democrats if the repeal effort fails.
Trump Offers No Apology for Claim on British Spying
Mr. Trump made clear that he felt the White House had nothing to retract or apologize for. He said his spokesman was simply repeating an assertion made by a Fox News commentator.
.. “We said nothing,” Mr. Trump told a German reporter who asked about the matter at a joint White House news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel. “All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it.” He added: “You shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”
.. Shortly afterward, Fox backed off the claim made by its commentator, Andrew Napolitano. “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary,” the anchor Shepard Smith said on air. “Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time, any way. Full stop.”
.. “Frankly, unless you can produce some pretty compelling truth, I think President Obama is owed an apology,” Mr. Cole told reporters. “If he didn’t do it, we shouldn’t be reckless in accusations that he did.”
.. “The cost of falsely blaming our closest ally for something this consequential cannot be overstated,” Susan E. Rice, who was Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, wrote on Twitter. “And from the PODIUM.”
.. Mr. Spicer tried to turn the tables on those statements during his briefing on Thursday by reading from a sheaf of news accounts that he suggested backed up the president. Most of the news accounts, however, did not verify the president’s assertion
.. But it has never reported that Mr. Obama authorized the surveillance, nor that Mr. Trump himself was monitored.
.. Mr. Spicer read from comments made by Mr. Napolitano on Fox this week. “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command,” Mr. Spicer read. “He didn’t use the N.S.A., he didn’t use the C.I.A., he didn’t use the F.B.I., and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ.”
.. GCHQ was the first agency to warn the United States government, including the National Security Agency, that Russia was hacking Democratic Party emails during the presidential campaign.
Donald Trump’s Medical Delusions
Some Republicans appear to be realizing that their long con on Obamacare has reached its limit. Chanting “repeal and replace” may have worked as a political strategy, but coming up with a conservative replacement for the Affordable Care Act — one that doesn’t take away coverage from tens of millions of Americans — isn’t easy. In fact, it’s impossible.
But it seems that nobody told Mr. Trump. In Wednesday’s news conference, he asserted that he would submit a replacement plan, “probably the same day” as Obamacare’s repeal — “could be the same hour” — that will be “far less expensive and far better”; also, with much lower deductibles.
.. the anti-Obamacare campaign has always been based on lies that can’t survive actual repeal.
A prime example is the pretense that health reform hasn’t helped anyone. “Things are only getting worse under Obamacare,” declared Paul Ryan,
.. an overwhelming majority of those covered by the new health exchanges are satisfied with their coverage.
.. the percentage of nonelderly white adults without insurance fell by almost half from 2010 to 2016, from 16.4 to 8.7, a gain surely concentrated in the Trump-supporting white working class.
.. Republican ideas about cost control are all about “skin in the game,” requiring people to pay more out of pocket (which somehow doesn’t stop them from complaining about high deductibles).
.. they’ll probably do it because they believe they can find some way to blame Democrats for the ensuing disaster.
Let’s Say Obamacare Is Repealed. What Then?
For years, they’ve been trying to change Medicaid funding to a block grant that they can then constrain over time. This will be enticing for them because it will allow them to reduce Medicaid spending in the future, while forcing states to make the tough decisions — and take the blame — for cuts in either beneficiaries or services.
Fixing the markets for those who are getting health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, though, is a different story. Without some sort of market regulation, which they’ve generally been opposed to, the same problems that existed pre-A.C.A. with respect to pre-existing conditions and individual ratings will exist. Many people will become uninsured. Annual and lifetime limits could reappear. Lots of people will have problems getting insured.
.. Yes, I think Democrats would filibuster anything they could. The filibuster is not set in stone. A Senate majority can change it, and some are already calling for the G.O.P. to do so. But that doesn’t appear to be what the Senate will do — they’ll retain the filibuster. This could play to their favor, since they can propose things they like, let the Democrats filibuster them and take the blame when repeal kicks in with no replacement. Perhaps that’s another way for Republicans to get out of their political bind.