Republicans Still Have A Chance to Repeal Obamacare — If They Can Take It

The Senate will vote this week. Will the GOP do what it has promised for so long?

Charlie Gerow
Jul 24, 2017 · 5 min read

Let’s start with what should be obvious: Obamacare has failed.

It never did what it promised. The Affordable Care Act never got around to becoming affordable. Premiums and deductibles skyrocketed while patient choice and care plummeted.

Former President Bill Clinton said Obamacare was “the craziest thing in the world.” That was in the midst of last year’s presidential election. Clinton, you’ll remember, knows a thing or two about crazy healthcare reform initiatives.

For years some Democrats publicly called Obamacare “a train wreck.” Privately many others expressed similar thoughts. Today you’ll be hard pressed to find a Democrat who won’t say that Obamacare is “flawed” and needs to be repaired. That is certainly a curious development: the Democrats voted for Obamacare, and now their best defense of this program is that it needs major overhaul.

That’s from moderate Democrats. The farther left variety are calling for “single-payer” schemes, which is shorthand for universal healthcare coverage provided for by the government.

Many who opposed Obamacare from the start believed that the ultimate goal of its proponents, who knew it was bound to eventually collapse under its own weight, was to replace it with a “single-payer” program for all Americans (already in place for Medicare as well as healthcare for veterans and Native Americans).

It took massive amounts of arm-twisting and back-room dealing to get Obamacare through in the first place. Remember the “Louisiana Purchase” that swung one key vote and the “Cornhusker Kickback” that provided the last vote necessary to get Obamacare through an overwhelmingly Democratic congress?

Once passed we got to learn what was in the bill, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had suggested. As layers were peeled back, the rot of the core was long ago exposed.

Republicans, meanwhile promised to repeal and replace Obamacare. They ran on that platform in 2010, the first congressional elections since the passage of Obamacare. They won landslide victories and took control of Congress.

For the last seven years Republicans have made the “repeal and replace” promise with great political success. They repeatedly passed repeal legislation, knowing that it faced a presidential veto. Sitting under a Democratic president — and one whose namesake is on the bill, no less — repeal proposals were never going to get anywhere. Political observers could tell that the fanfare over sending the White House repeal legislation never amounted to anything more than political theater. There was no chance the President was going to agree to repeal his signature healthcare law, nor did the Republicans have the numbers to override his veto pen. Yet it’s a mistake to characterize the above as mere theater; it represented a signaling of intentions. “Give us power,” the message went, “and we will repeal and replace this failing healthcare bill.”

The 2016 presidential election heard cries of “repeal and replace” both from candidate Donald Trump and GOP congressional candidates. Their voices were amplified by reports in the waning days of the campaign about the soaring costs of Obamacare and the shrinking choices available as providers exited market after market.

Those promises helped give the Republicans everything they asked for — control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.

Yet now? January’s gleefulness has given way to the mid-summer blues as legislative attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare have faltered and failed.

Last week, the Senate plan came to a screeching halt. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s thin margin evaporated when Republican Sens. Mike Lee, of Utah, and Jerry Moran, of Kansas, joined their GOP colleagues, Sens. Rand Paul, of Kentucky, and Susan Collins, of Maine, in opposing the bill.

It’s likely that there were other Republicans willing to bolt, too. None wanted to be the “vote that killed healthcare reform,” hence the coupon line of Moran and Lee once Paul and Collins left only one vote to kill the measure.

With their defections went the opportunity to repeal crushing taxes, get premiums and deductibles under control, begin stabilizing individual healthcare markets, and expand consumer choices.

The chance to reform half century old Medicaid, offered by Sen. Pat Toomey, of Pennsylvania, and get its runaway costs — growing faster than the national economy — under control went out the window, too. At least for the time being.

President Donald Trump, in a Captain Obvious moment, observed that, “If the Republicans have the House and have the Senate and have the presidency and can’t pass the health care bill they are going to look weak.”

Trump isn’t famous for understatement, so his choice of words is telling.

This was a failure, pure and simple. Whether it can be corrected and how much long-term damage has been done to taxpayers, patients, and the Republican brand remains to be seen.

I’m a glass half-full guy; an eternal optimist. So like many others, I’ll be looking carefully at the effort to put up a repeal bill for a vote — even if there is no great likelihood of success.

Any senator who casts a procedural vote to keep the measure from the floor should be viewed as voting to keep Obamacare in place. The blame for the disaster that ensues will be partly theirs, and not on those who wanted to keep their promises to the voters who put them in office.

Something very good could come from such a vote. It will put every member of the Senate on record. Twenty-five Democrats will have to take that record to their voters next year.

Included in that number are 10 who hail from states carried by Trump. Some are states he carried by huge margins like the 42 percent margin in West Virginia. Requiring those Senators to tell their constituents exactly where they stand might have a very positive effect.

Most folks don’t care much about the legislative process or the nuances of proposed statutory language. But they know what they were promised and they know what they voted for.

They gave the Republicans a mandate and they want it fulfilled. There’s still an opportunity to do that.

Charlie Gerow

Written by

CEO of Quantum Communications, Vice Chairman of the American Conservative Union (Host of CPAC), and CBS political analyst.

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