Once the individual mandate was repealed, it seemed inevitable that the courts would find it unconstitutional. That will happen soon. It looks like the appeals court is ready to strike down part or all of the plan, although the Supreme Court will have the final say.
Republicans have a golden opportunity to replace it with something that does not involve big government. That doesn’t seem likely to happen.
With all the intervening years to plan a replacement, they apparently don’t have a plan on the ready. Even if they have a plan, Democrats will not work on a plan with Republicans and many Republicans will not cooperate with each other.
In comes liberal Republican Mitt Romney, a Trump hater, and the originator of the first Obamacare, Romneycare.
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“I have a plan that I would be delighted to have Congress pick up and go forward with,” added Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) of a proposal to protect pieces of the law. “Necessity is the mother of acceptance. I hope that we reach that necessity and that would propel my proposal to see a good deal of support.”
He is currently working with liberal Republicans like Lamar Alexander and Chuck Grassley who will only work on a bipartisan plan [that Democrats will never accept].
We haven’t seen the plan and don’t know if it’s good or not, but he is a big government Republican.
DEMOCRATS AND SOME REPUBLICANS WON’T APPROVE ANY PLAN
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), who has jurisdiction over health care reform, said the chances of putting together something to replace ObamaCare in this Congress are “slim to nil.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the senior Democrat on the Senate Health Committee, said there’s no trust between the parties on the issue after she says Republicans “sabotaged” a bill she negotiated with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) in the last Congress to fund cost-sharing reduction subsidies.
“I think the trust is gone on both sides,” she said. “I’m willing to talk to them, but we’re not going to take away the protections that people in this country expected and that everyone campaigned on.”
Romney is responsible for Obamacare. His Massachusetts Romneycare, a big government takeover, was probably the model for Obamacare.
The Romneycare law mandated that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a minimum level of insurance coverage, provided free and subsidized health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% and 300%, respectively, of the federal poverty level (FPL) and mandated employers with more than 10 full-time employees provide healthcare insurance.
It wasn’t as bad as Obamacare.
ROMNEY ADMITTED ROMNEYCARE WAS OBAMACARE
In an article in the Boston Globe, Romney credits the late Staples founder Thomas Stemberg with pushing him toward implementing universal health care in the state in 2006.
Romney said that shortly after he was elected, Mr. Stemberg asked him why he ran for governor. Romney said he told him that he wanted to help people, and Mr. Stemberg replied that if he really wanted to help, he should give everyone access to health care, which Romney said he hadn’t really considered before.
“Without Tom pushing it, I don’t think we would have had Romneycare,” Romney said. “Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So, without Tom, a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.”
Romney, a globalist Republican, never withdrew his support for Romneycare, although he claimed he opposed Obamacare.
ROMNEY IN THE LEAD
Romney is now taking the lead here.
Romney is reportedly working with Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and consulting closely with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Texas, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., spoke about being prepared if the courts strike the current health care law — they’ve had more than a decade to offer an alternative plan.
“If there’s one thing we learned from the ObamaCare fight two years ago: We better be prepared in advance with more specificity as to what our plans our,” Capito said of the failed effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare in 2017.
In the end, we face the same logjam we faced last time, if Obamacare falls, Republicans won’t be able to get a replacement in place before the election and they will get creamed by Democrats and the media as 20 million Americans are dropped from insurance plans.
Republicans, DO NOT REPLACE OBAMACARE WITH ANYTHING THAT HAS GOVERNMENT INVOVLEMNT. LEAVE ME ALONE! You screw up everything you touch. Bureaucrats can’t help screwing up everything they touch. It’s in their DNA. And due to the inherent greed of politicians, they can’t help dipping into the taxpayers’ money earmarked for healthcare. Just let us go back to the market based system that has worked so well for generations and gave us the premier health care system of the world, bar none. Don’t believe it? Then why did people come here from all over the world, including Canada, for their lifesaving treatment? Because they couldn’t get it anywhere else. Or if they could, in government socialized medicine countries like Canada, Sweden, England, etc. they had to wait to get their care, often long after it was too late. That is a fact.
As far as Romney’s narrow mind can see, he thinks the Romney Care he pushed in MA was so great and wants to do the same for the entire US. What he isn’t saying is the murdering Ted Kennedy was able to force the federal government, that’s taxpayers from all across the US, to subsidize Romney Care to the tune of $400M/year. US taxpayers bailed out MA, who’s going to bail out the US under a federalized Romney Care? We don’t have the money. Furthermore healthcare is not a right unless you can pay for it. NOBODY has the right, not even a God given right to forcibly, including using the force of government, to take money from somebody else for their care including health care.
Mittens is at it again. Trying to be relevant by proposing his only claim to fame to be instituted…again. It is a failure in its Ocare form, and anything closely resembling it will be a failure if reborn as the “new” plan.
What has the government ever done that was successful? Government always screws up most any program it attempts to fix.
The photo of Romney with this article is perfect. Looks like he’s asleep, or a standing corpse.
Beware of Rick Scott, he’s another RINO.
Live by the Court, die by the Court. It may have been Romney that said his didn’t work because it wasn’t national. I suspect that’s what he has planned now. They should take a page out of Trump’s playbook. Nearly everyone agrees the economy is doing great primarily because of “cutting regulations”. It that works for business then apply the same process for health care. We’ve had all these problems when people were complaining about HMO’s, and WHERE did that idea come from, Congress. Congress shouldn’t be writing ANYONE’S insurance plans. Before HMO’s there was a time I didn’t have any insurance, with a baby on the way. I arranged with a doctor and paid $250 dollars for the entire term, including post care.
I still haven’t found out what the particulars were with Obamacare AND deductibles. My insurance before retirement had around a 2000-2500 deductible before they paid it all. But up UNTIL that amount I paid a 20 percent charge on bills and the insurance paid 80. That’s the way it had been for a good 20-30 years. I couldn’t find anyone on Obamacare to say whether or not there was an 80/20 payment before a deductible kicked in. Of course if the deductible is 5000 to over 10,000 that is pretty steep. By the way, I did hit the deductible once after an elective cardiac ablation for severe palpitations that lasted 3 days.
Same old stuff about to come around again.