GOP Senators: We Have Healthcare "Fix"

by JASmius



Not an ObamaCare repeal, or even a replacement, but a "fix".

I don't know about all of you, but that doesn't do anything for my vital signs:

Three leading Republican senators are promising to help millions of people who may lose federal health insurance subsidies if the Supreme Court invalidates a pillar of President Barack Obama's healthcare law.

Bet you couldn't tell this was an Associated Press lede, could you?

Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, John Barrasso of Wyoming, and Orrin Hatch of Utah outline their plan in a Washington Post opinion article titled "We have a plan for fixing healthcare" posted online Sunday evening.

And "We have a plan for fixing healthcare" appears to be the extent of their "outline".

The article provides no detail on how much assistance they would propose, its duration or how they would pay for it. Nor do they address how they would overcome GOP divisions or Democratic opposition to weakening the law.

Hey, AP, they said they "had a plan". Kind of like a painter has an easel, canvass, and paint, but can't find his confounded brush.  Or, in this case, won't find it for fear that their easel and canvass will end up scattered, torn shreds of debris, and them along with it.

But then, that was one of the primary purposes of ObamaCare: to mire as many Americans as possible in dependency upon it for their very lives so as to make it politically impossible for Republicans to get rid of it.  Which is what made, in my august opinion, the 2012 election the point of no return for the Old American Republic, because that was the last chance to reverse course before the Unaffordable Care-Less Act became entrenched.

Case in point:

The senators' article is the latest political salvo that seems aimed as much at the court's nine justices as at the public. Last week, Health and Human Services [Commissar] Sylvia Burwell said nullifying the subsidies would cause "massive damage to our healthcare system."

Actually, it is ObamaCare that has done massive damage to our healthcare system.  But nobody is supposed to notice, much less publicly say, that.  And you'll notice that Commissar Burwell directed her rhetorical fire at the SCOTUS, not three piddling Pachyderms who have one tabula rasa "plan" amongst a multitude of them:

Congressional Republicans unanimously opposed the law's creation and have long worked on plans to weaken and replace it. They have not united behind a specific proposal.

Which means some congressional Republicans are serious about scrapping ObamaCare, and some are too chicken to do so but want to be seen as striving for the same goal, even though disunity will make attaining that goal impossible, even if it wasn't already impossible due to Barack Obama's re-election.

As for the Hatch-Alexander-Barasso "plan" itself, well....:

In their column, the three senators acknowledge that if their side prevails in court, six million Americans could lose subsidies and many would no longer afford coverage. They call the case "an opportunity" to reshape the law and say they "have a plan to protect these people and create a bridge away from" the statute.

"First and most important, we would provide financial assistance to help Americans keep the coverage they picked for a transitional period," they wrote.

Without saying how, they wrote that they would also give states more flexibility to create their own health insurance marketplaces. And they blame the health law for problems like forcing many Americans to surrender their previous insurance and doctors.

"People do not deserve further disruption from the law," they wrote.

Does anybody even remember what the original "law" was?  Even its namesake?  And does even he care, as long as some amalgam of it remains in force?  It is, itself, merely the bridge to single-payer, after all.

Yes, I can hear the Tea Party "RINOs!!!!" caterwauling already.  "Replacing one subsidy regime with another" - which, if Bill Clinton were still POTUS, he'd probably accept, both to get out from under the "incompetence" stigma of the original UCLA being so poorly written as to leave out subsidies for plans purloined though healthcare.gov, as well as belatedly getting GOP fingerprints on, and therefore ownership of, ObamaCare overall, but Barack Obama never will - "'reshape' the law rather than repeal it," "dupe more States into setting up O-Care exchanges" - which sure appears to be what "give states more flexibility to create their own health insurance marketplaces" sounds like, meaning that the "Gang of Three" are either genuinely selling out, or they are more abysmal at the written word than they are at public speaking.

But we all need to remember what every such "plan" and "healthcare fix" floated on Capitol Hill is at this point: an audition for Scott Walker's 2016 GOP platform, because no further changes to ObamaCare are going to come from anyone, anything, and anywhere outside of Red Barry's pen and phone.  And something tells me the Wisconsin Governor is going to have his own ideas on healthcare, and that they will be far more to your and my liking.