House Resets Obamacare Repeal Debate
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… it’s important to know that there are still efforts ongoing to revive the Obamacare repeal process. The main sticking point is that the plan pushed by Speaker Paul Ryan and supported by President Trump did not include Title I of Obamacare to be repealed. This section of Obamacare (the first section of the law), is the primary cause of increased costs on American families. Had AHCA passed as is, Republicans would have been stuck with a plan that would have continued to increase costs until, at the very least, 2026. Politically such an outcome is an ambush for the Republican Party, but more importantly, it’s bad policy.
An argument was made that we can fix these problems in “phase 2” or “phase 3”. Not wanting perfect to be the enemy of good, we looked at those claims and realized that the legal, procedural, and political outcome of such an path was extremely unlikely to work, otherwise we would have of course been willing to compromise if there was a realistic chance of getting to the desired outcome via that alternative path.
It became clear that the only way we’d be able to get to the cost issue and actually help American families being crushed by rising premiums was by standing firm and insisting that the Title I regulatory parts of the Obamacare most harming American families be included in “phase 1” on this bill to be repealed. Though the rest of the bill was far from perfect, an AHCA bill that repealed Title I regulations would have been a compromise that conservatives could agree to, and then move on to work to improve the rest at a later time.
Unfortunately Paul Ryan and President Trump weren’t able to quite deliver that product and the current effort has stalled. We are hopeful that both Speaker Ryan and President Trump will continue to work with conservatives on this and get a bill that conservatives can agree to.
Public Polling is also beginning to show that the House Freedom Caucus conservatives who opposed AHCA are doing the Republican Party and President Trump a big favor. By a very wide margin, Republican voters in every district polled favored a bill that actually repealed Obamacare over the AHCA bill brought forward.
Repealing Obamacare is a priority and will be a major achievement for the Trump administration. It is important that we get this done and build momentum into the rest of this Congress and other major legislative achievements.
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