“It’s not my bill,” he told CNN, noting that the White House had helped Congress draft it. “It’s our bill.” As if for emphasis, he also noted that he talks to the president almost every day.
.. Hours after the release of a damaging analysis on the health bill from the Congressional Budget Office, the site published leaked audio of Mr. Ryan telling House members last October that he could no longer defend Mr. Trump’s campaign.
The content of the tape was not news; Mr. Ryan’s view at the time was clear, just after the release of the “Access Hollywood” video in which Mr. Trump boasted of sexually assaulting women. But to admirers of Mr. Ryan, the message of the leak was unsubtle.
.. Mr. Trump has also told people that if this effort fails, he will try again in two years.
.. After Mr. Ryan distanced himself in October, Mr. Trump savaged him as a “weak and ineffective leader.”
But by December, the two had reconciled. At a rally together in Wisconsin, Mr. Trump compared Mr. Ryan to “a fine wine” whose “genius” he had grown to appreciate.
Then came the hedge: “Now, if he ever goes against me, I’m not going to say that.”
C.B.O Report Leaves Trump in a Political Log Jam on Health Care
“If there was ever a war on seniors, this bill is it,” Schumer said. “It spends more on tax cuts for health-insurance companies and the wealthy than on tax credits to help the middle class.
.. To begin with, the reason the additional measures that Spicer mentioned aren’t included in Ryan’s current proposal is that they would require sixty votes in the Senate to pass.
.. Jim Jordan, the Ohio representative who heads the Freedom Caucus
.. Jordan added that he and his colleagues would offer a series of amendments to the legislation when it comes to the House floor, next week. These are likely to include things like moving up the dismantling of the A.C.A.’s Medicaid expansion from 2020 to 2018, which would only further increase the number of uninsured.
.. If he sticks with the current bill, Trump would be tied to a proposal that would do great harm to many of his supporters and make a mockery of his claims to be a populist.
.. The Trump Administration could, for example, push to take some of this money and make the tax credits in the bill more generous, especially for lower-income people, or preserve at least part of the Medicaid expansion.
.. If the White House preserved some of the taxes imposed by the A.C.A., which fell on people earning more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, it would have even more leeway to come up with a less damaging proposal.
.. Chris Ruddy, the founder of the conservative news site Newsmax, wrote in a piece published Tuesday that it’s time for Trump to “ditch the Freedom Caucus and the handful of Senate Republicans who want a complete repeal of Obamacare. They don’t agree with universal coverage and will never be placated.”
Voters Won’t Ignore This CBO Score
I mean, I sure do like those budget numbers. On the other hand, 24 million is a whole lot of folks. Republicans are going to stand accused of taking insurance away from a lot of needy people in order to cut nearly a trillion dollars worth of taxes. And in fairness, that is kind of what this bill does.
.. According to the CBO, under Obamacare, a 64-year-old making 450 percent of the federal poverty line, or about $53,000 a year, can expect to pay $15,300 a year for a plan that covers 65% of their expected medical expenses.
You can easily see why someone in that situation would be reluctant to pay that much for insurance.
.. Moreover, many of the folks who will see their insurance options shrink are those older white voters in rural districts who helped put Trump over the top. The merely middle aged won’t get hurt too badly, though they, too, will see their premiums go up. But the older, not-poor-but-sure-not-rich folks? They get creamed.
.. We do not rely on CBO scores because they are particularly accurate, but because they are consistent, allowing us to compare bills to each other — and because they provide an exceptionally useful check on the wildly overoptimistic estimates that politicians would produce on their own.
.. We could argue about whether the insurance markets are going to stabilize with a younger, healthier pool, as the CBO suggests, or whether I’m right that there’s a substantial risk they won’t stabilize and will instead start spiraling towards death.
The Worst Argument for Trumpcare: People Don’t Need Health Insurance
There are many good arguments to be made in favor of Trumpcare, but this is not one of them.
Of all the arguments to make for repealing and replacing Obamacare, the very worst is that people don’t need health insurance.
.. Sean Spicer told reporters last week, “When we get asked the question, ‘How many people are going to get covered?’ that’s not the question that should be asked.” Pressed on the merits of the bill by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney shot back, “You’re worried about getting people covered.” As if that’s a woeful mistake. This is a strange rhetorical tack for officials in an administration led by a president who pledged to cover everyone.
.. But the best response to criticisms that Trumpcare doesn’t cover enough people is simple and more fundamental — to get the coverage numbers up.
.. The arguments that they are making in public are the kinds of things you might have expected to hear at a private fundraiser of the sort that undid Mitt Romney when he famously dismissed “the 47 percent.”