Will the healthcare mess undo the Republican Party?

Let’s freaking hope so!

Not sure. Trump’s administration has essentially told the GOP that they need to sign off on it now,despite their reservations, or the ACA won’t be undone. It’s an ultimatum.

What I don’t understand, is why they didn’t have a plan for life without the ACA, after they’ve been trying to shut it down for years.

At this point, anyone in politics is going to have to decide if they will tie themselves to this administration, and maybe see Trump impeached, and watch their careers go down with him.

If you’re going to hitch your wagon to Trump, you’re “all in.”

In a normal world, yes.

But if there’s one thing we have seen over the last 30 years, it is a Republican skill to lie, dissemble, shade, rationalize, and when that fails, invent an entire alternate world where they win. This goes back to Nixon, but the Republicans got real good at it during the Reagan years and beyond.

So I have no doubt that the Republican strategists are re-reading the book 1984, and are planning to recase history with them as the winners.

No. It may doom some, but not all. And it’s not entirely the fault of the elected Republicans, but also the people who voted them in. (Democrats are not above this either. No political party is.)

It seems to me that whichever party tries to reconcile anything other than universal single payer healthcare must take a solid beating politically.

It’s difficult. Obamacare was designed to fail and the only way out would be single payer. The Republicans are trying to find another way. A complete repeal and replacement will never get through the Senate so they are trying to do it piecemeal. The contention among the Republicans boils down to those that want a complete repeal and those that want it done in stages. I tend to agree with the stages but it does open the door to failure if the subsequent stages get stalled in the Senate. The Democrats continue to scream that the Republicans don’t have a plan while working feverishly to insure any plan will be defeated. A work in progress.

Sooner or later, our country will be forced to join the rest of the civilized world.

@Jaxk – i have zero confidence that steps #2 and #3 will ever take place. I doubt the republicans intend to. It’s a throw-away lne.

I would argue that they didn’t/don’t have a actual plan. I have read the current plan. The current plan is 123 pages. 70 deal with replacing Obamacare. Here is the fucking hilarious part. Six pages is dedicated to lottery winners.

And these pages are very few words. I wrote longer papers in Writing 122 my first year of college.

So it is like they banged out something quick and then some dude was all, “What about if someone wins the lottery?” and then the bill expands nearly 10%. That is why the Obamacare bill is so big. It plans for a lot more than winning the lottery.

The bill kinda reminds me of one of the first webpages I wrote. Lets say I didn’t account for people using special charterers like +_#$%^* in their usernames. Then things went to shit.

Sometimes you have to account for every oddball situation that could come up. Trumpcare has only noticed one odd situation, if you win the lottery and receive Medicaid.

This is not comforting.

Edit:: And where is my postcard flat-tax-form? It has been promised for nearly my entire life. Republicans control everything now. Get on it….

I doubt it.

If Nixon escalating the Vietnam War to 500,000 troops and spending one million dollars a minute for eight years didn’t do it, nothing will.

If Reagan cutting services to the bone and ignoring infrastructure maintenance didn’t do it, nothing will.

If George Bush, Jr. lying about the WMD’s and sucking us into a fifteen-year, two-pronged war didn’t do it, nothing will.

If a Republican president who is batshit crazy occupies the White House, alienates almost every world leader, friend and foe, and most of the civil service heads under him, continuously denies his lies and mistakes and shows every sign of clinical paranoia, then spews “alternative facts” all night long on Twitter doesn’t do it, nothing will.

It will definitely hurt both the GOP and Trump, but the party will continue.

Here is something to contemplate. Suppose Trump becomes so popular that he loses the GOP presidential primary in 2020. I would not automatically discount the possibility. It is not without precedent

AHCA just got pulled and Trump is saying he hopes to revisit healthcare but “not in the near future.”

Tears of relief.

@Mariah I wish the issues were not so dire. In the upcoming months we are in for some instructive episodes on knuckleheads careening head first into the wall of reality. This would be first class entertainment were it not for the fact that clowns can cripple as well as kill you.

OK Another BIG failure and empty promise from the puffed up boasting loudmouth.

Technically the Republicans are right. Obamacare IS unwieldy and prohibitively expensive. But here is where loudmouth rubber meets the road of reality. The question before our government now boils down to whether or not people ARE ENTITLED to healthcare. Conservatives loathe the word “entitled”, but the fact is that people DO and SHOULD feel entitled to healthcare. There’s just no disputing the fact that the great bulk of us are unprepared to accept the idea of people suffering and dying for lack of medical attention. So what is the best, most efficient and comprehensive solution to providing coverage for EVERYONE? Wanna guess?

I think the beauty of the current dilemma is that the crunch is coming with Republicans in firm control of the government. Because regardless of how obtuse or backward our citizenry might appear, NOBODY in their right mind believes that a nation with the wealth and resources of the United States cannot assure healthcare to the entirety of its population.

America has had their first taste of national healthcare insurance. There is no turning back now, without major civil disobedience. What you saw at those little Republican Townhall meetings was the tip of the iceberg—they were sending people out to talk about repl acing the ACA, not actually replacing it. And they damn near had riots at almost every townhall. No turning back.

But that first taste is bad. It’s a bad plan and expensive because they haven’t cut out the middleman—the purveyors of the healthcare industry and their stockholders.

Eventually, we will come to the conclusion that the only national—truly universal—healthcare we can afford is a Single-payer healthcare system, like every other civilized nation on earth.

Now is the time to write your congressman and educate them on the bargaining power of 325 million Americans for meds and services and how when everyone is insured from cradle to grave, expensive liability insurance becomes unnecessary allowing more people to own cars, have businesses, own homes. The benefits to the economy reach far beyond caring for people who can’t afford healthcare.

Now is the time. And keep up the pressure until this country comes to it’s senses.

United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Preamble:
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

I’m glad they didn’t throw us to the wolves regarding healthcare, but I don’t feel any relief. I’m still in a sucky situation regarding healthcare.