President Trump and many Republicans in Congress campaigned in 2016 with a promise to repeal Obamacare, the former president’s signature bill that essentially took over the health insurance market.
But it’s still the law of the land, even as several more members of Congress committed on Wednesday their support for the Republican leadership’s “repeal-and-replace” bill.
It’s because, according to several analysts, some Republicans simply don’t want to get rid of it.
This despite White House spokesman Sean Spicer’s insistence on Wednesday that the system is failing, the costs are out of control and insurance companies are fleeing the program as quickly as they can.
Byron York at the Washington Examiner noted the initial Republican replacement bill was abruptly withdrawn before a vote because it didn’t have enough support.
“We’re going to go when we have the votes,” Ryan said recently.
But why is that so? Obamacare was approved only by Democrats when they controlled the House, Senate and White House. Now all three are in Republican hands.
York pointed out that Republicans have 238 seats in the House, and repealing Obamacare will require 217 votes.
“Even with unanimous Democratic opposition, Republicans could lose 21 votes and still prevail on repeal. Why haven’t they done it?”
He said it’s becoming “increasingly clear that Republicans have not repealed Obamacare because a lot of Republicans do not want to repeal Obamacare.”
“They don’t even want to sorta repeal Obamacare. The bill currently on the table, like the bill pulled in March, falls far short of a full repeal of Obamacare. And yet Republicans still cannot agree on it.”
One unnamed source told York:Â “It is a problem that we have members in the Republican conference that do not want Obamacare repealed, because of their district. That’s the fundamental thing that we’re seeing here.”
York said that in a phone conversation Thursday afternoon, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, estimated the number of House Republicans who don’t want to repeal Obamacare is in the 40s.
“If you don’t want to get rid of federal mandates to health insurance, then it’s pretty clear you don’t want to get rid of Obamacare,” King said.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said on Fox News that lawmakers know that any plan that gets approved will not be a full repeal of Obamacare.
“But it’s as good as we think we can get right now,” he said.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said on Fox News on Wednesday that the current effort needs to be dropped cold and a new White House-originated plan, based on the “drain the swamp” and “repeal” ideas Trump campaigned on, needs to be proposed.
Others contend the thousands of pages of Obamacare, with tens of thousands of pages of rules imposed based on the law, cannot be handled with a single “repeal” vote.
It took Obama two years to pass Obamacare, and some believe it will take as long to get rid of it.
So what’s happened since those flowery campaign commitments?
“A pure repeal would get less than 200 votes,” another House member told York. “It really is one of the biggest political shams in history – many of these members would not have been elected without promising repeal, and now they are wilting. Some are even complaining that [the Rep. Tom MacArthur amendment] pushes the bill too far right – even though is it far short of a full repeal.”
Matt O’Brien at the Washington Post said it appears Republicans’ new strategy for not replacing Obamacare is to make moderates kill the plan, “and it’s working.”
“Now this plan might seem strange when Republicans have spent the last seven years acting like Obamacare was the worst thing to happen to the country since the British burned down the White House in 1814. But it’s a little less so if you listen to what their individual members are actually saying,” he explained.
“Some Republicans, you see, are philosophically opposed to the very idea of Obamacare giving health insurance to the poor and sick, while others are only politically opposed to the idea of a president named Obama doing so. If anything, they think that Obamacare doesn’t go far enough to keep deductibles down. Which, as I’ve said before, means that the GOP is stuck in an old Woody Allen joke: It thinks the problem with Obamacare, metaphorically speaking, is that the food is terrible and the portions are too small. Good luck putting those together.”
The most recent surge in support for the GOP replacement plan comes from Reps. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Billy Long, R-Mo., who Wednesday changed from opposing the plan to supporting it.
They confirmed their support after meeting with the president, and Upton suggested it now is likely “to pass the House.”
Their concern was that the new plan failed to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but an amendment was added to address that.
Upton said a vote in the House Rules Committee could happen as early as this week, which observers noted would not allow time for a new Congressional Budget Office analysis.
Another change came from Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., requested by the House Freedom Caucus, that lets states waive Obamacare protections that prevent people from being charged higher premiums based on their health.
Even as the negotiations continued in Washington, the Washington Examiner reported there was only one insurer operating in 94 of Iowa’s 99 counties, after the departures of Aetna and Wellmark, and it was plotting its exit.
“Next year may be the first in which there are zero Obamacare insurers in some U.S. counties,” the report said, citing the problems are two Obamacare demands, “‘Community rating,’ which requires that everyone of the same age be offered the same price for coverage, and ‘guaranteed issue,’ which requires that all applicants be accepted, regardless of pre-existing conditions,” said the report.
“Without the ability to price for health risk, and with only limited ability to charge more for age, insurers find themselves unable to make money. They could respond by raising premiums even further, but this risks making the problem worse by scaring away the healthiest customers,” the report said.
Trump has encouraged Congress to work on a solution to Obamacare’s failures before it implodes on its own.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas., is confident the votes will eventually come around on a plan to replace Obamacare.
“I think the hesitation has only been to be able to digest this, to be able to think about how it applies back home, before they commit their vote. The conversations that I’ve been in are very positive and we’re just going to keep working on it,” said Brady.
He’s not worried about a time deadline.
Hear the interview:
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“I’m a big believer in letting the consensus drive the timing. So don’t set a date. I want to deliver on my promise to repeal Obamacare: all the taxes, all the mandates, all the subsidies, defund Planned Parenthood and return control to the states. That is what I am intent on doing,” said Brady.
Brady, who played a key role in crafting the original American Health Care Act, says the current bill is an improvement.
“Centrists and conservatives sat down and said, ‘How can we make this better?’ As a result, the MacArthur amendment, as well as the Palmer amendment before it, continue to lower premiums, which is what we want for every American, gives states more flexibility to design plans that are right for the state and the community rather than Washington control,” said Brady.
