Obama and the Democrats vs Trump and the GOP : Obamacare's Last Gasp

After pulling the Republican caucus out of the fire on Tuesday by stepping in to halt their decision to place the Office of Congressional Ethics under the House Ethics Committee, President-Elect Donald Trump on Wednesday struck out on Twitter about Obamacare and called for the GOP to ensure Democrats are held accountable for the impacts of President Obama's signature healthcare legislation. Trump tweeted : "Republicans must be careful in that the Dems own the failed Obamacare disaster, with its poor coverage and massive premium increases like the 116% hike in Arizona. Also, deductibles are so high that it is practically useless. Don't let the Schumer clowns out of this web massive increases of Obamacare will take place this year and Dems are to blame for the mess. It will fall of its own weight - be careful!" After the GOP fiasco on Tuesday, we can see why Trump would be out front on Obamacare. • • • THE DEMOCRAT PLAN. Trump struck just as President Obama heads to Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning to meet with congressional Democrats to talk about protecting Obamacare. Trump made the repeal and replacement of Obamacare a key promise of his presidential campaign, and the real work begins now that Congress is back in session. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said Wednesday that Republicans want to "Make America Sick Again" by trying to repeal Obamacare. Schumer told Politico : "It will create chaos. Because you cannot repeal a plan and put nothing in its place. It doesn’t matter if you say the repeal won’t take place for year or two years." As Democrats gear up for a fight on Obamacare, Schumer suggested : "Some of us might want to offer a public option if you kept Obamacare, not if you repealed it. Some of us would want to give the insurance regulators more clout to come down on the insurance companies. Things like that." • And, that is exactly why Trump is warning the GOP to "be careful." The Democrats in Congress are bound to come up with all sorts of good-sounding ideas to save Obamacare by tweaking its provisionw without repealing the healthcare plan that has caused so much damage to the US medical care system on every level -- from insurers, hospitals and doctors forced into an inferior 'nationalized' govenrment-controlled system to patients, employers and ordinary Americans looking for affordable healthcare but finding little choice in providers and high decuctibles that make Obamacare a farce foisted on America by Obama, Pelosi and their Progressive followers in the Democrat Party -- not one Republican voted for Obamacare when it passed in 2010. Trump is right to warn about Democrat siren-songs. • • • OBAMA'S LAST GASP. When President Obama meets with congressional Democrats on Wednesday, he will urge thm to stand fast against any GOP effort to repeal Obamacare. Obama, 16 days before he leaves office, will meet with Democrats from both chambers to rally the troops as he seeks to find ways to save his biggest, really his only, domestic 'achievement.' But, Democrats will find it very difficult to save Obamacare given that Republicans, who for years have promised to repeal the law, will on January 20 control both Congress and the White House. The Democrat ploy will be to target the GOP for taking away healthcare coverage for millions of Americans. Obama and his allies will highlight the dilemma Republicans face in repealing a program that they say provides health insurance to an estimated 20 million people who don’t get coverage from their employers or struggle to afford insurance. Obama will urge Democrats to focus on a feature of Obamacare that prevents insurers from rejecting people with pre-existing conditions. He plans to point out that a full repeal “ultimately is going to interfere with the ability to ensure that insurance companies sign everybody up,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. As for this Democrat "pre-existing conditions" argument, here is what Betsy McCaughey wrote in the New York Post : "President Obama says repeal will mean going 'back to discriminating against Americans with pre-existing conditions.' That's fake news. The truth is, all Republican proposals to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act protect people with pre-existing conditions. Likewise, they all eliminate Obamacare's invidious discrimination against healthy people.…To see how the GOP approach would work, look to Alaska, a state that seized the initiative when healthy consumers rebelled against their soaring Obamacare premiums. The burden of caring for 500 chronically ill patients was making Obamacare unaffordable for all 23,000 Alaskans in the individual markets....So in June state authorities created a separate 'high-risk' pool for the sickest people, with the cost shouldered by all Alaska taxpayers, instead of being thrust on buyers in the individual insurance market. As a result, premium hikes were kept to single digits. The Alaska remedy is a microcosm of what congressional Republicans propose for all 50 states." McCaughey says subsidies for high-risk pools nationwide would cost around $16 billion annually, which sounds like a lot, but is less than half the $43 billion spent on Obamacare plan subsidies last year : "And it's money far better spent, because it directly helps the sickest among us." In addition, according to Earnest, the fact that Republicans have said it could take years to develop and pass a replacement program "deeply" concerns Obama. Earnest added : “He’s also concerned about this Republican tactic of repeal-and-delay that ultimately is nothing more than just bait-and-switch.” Earnest said that leaving the future of Obamacare in a state of limbo is “not a responsible way to govern and it’s certainly not an indication you’re looking out for the working people of this country.” Obama plans to take his case to the public this week during a livestreamed interview with the left-leaning news website Vox. And, congressional Democrats are making their own push, organizing rallies against repeal around the country for January 15. • • • ENTER VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE. Vice President-Elect Pence will also be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday -- to meet with House and Senate Republicans in separate meetings. Pence and Obama’s dueling meetings set the stage for what may become the biggest political and policy battle of President Trump’s first 100 days in office. Trump has vowed to repeal Obamacare, while keeping its most popular provisions and Republicans are moving ahead quickly with their plans. Wednesday, Pence told reporters that Obamacare will be repealed to let the free market function to provide lower cost, choice-based healthcare to all Americans. And, Pence said, it will happen without shutting anyone out of the healthcare system. Speaker Paul Ryan, who was with Pence, said that Obamacare is a failed program that has left the government's other healthcare programs broken and broke. • Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi on Tuesday introduced a budget resolution as the first step to repealing Obamacare. The budget sets in motion a special process called reconciliation that allows repeal to pass with just 50 votes in the Senate, rather than the usual 60, meaning Republicans do not need Democratic votes. The budget instructs congressional committees to come up with a repeal bill by January 27, underscoring the fast GOP timetable. The GOP now must make several key decisions : (1) how long they should delay repeal going into effect -- conservatives want a two-year delay to the Obamacare replacement in place before the mid-term elections while others have suggested a three or even four-year delay; and, (2) what will replace Obamacare. The delayed repeal strategy would buy the GOP time to work on the replacement, but some Republicans want a replacement to happen at the same time as repeal. Senator Rand Paul this week was the latest Republican to call for simultaneous repeal and replace, saying he may consider not voting for a delay in replacement. • A plurality of Americans have an unfavorable view of Obamacare, according to the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. But, part of Obama's last gasp to save Obamacare will be to argue that Medicare could be put in danger by repealing the law that also extended the life of Medicare's trust fund for another 13 years. Earnest told reporters : “If Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act, they’ll be hastening the demise of Medicare that millions of seniors rely upon for their basic healthcare needs." Obamacare was paid for by cutting Medicare payments to doctors and increasing taxes. Those cuts and taxes also help improve Medicare's long- term financial situation, so repealing Obamacare is projected to hasten the insolvency of Medicare's trust fund. But, the truth is that while Obama and the Democrats like to cite Medicare as an example of the good Obamacare has done, Obamacare has cost seniors -- in coverage and out-of-pocket payments for drugs and other items. Speaker Ryan and the House GOP caucus promises to repair Medicare. • • • DEAR READERS, as he did with the Iran nuclear deal and the anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution, Barack Obama has chosen tactics designed to make it extremely difficult for the new Republican majority to overturn Obamacare. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi towed the Progressive line on Monday, telling reporters that it will be hard for Republicans to take health coverage away from people who have gained it under the law : “There’s no question that people react more from fear of what might be taken away than they do for something that is a prospect of a good thing coming their way.” In a "'Dear Colleague' letter this week, Pelosi wrote : "The Affordable Care Act has been successful in meeting its goals of reducing cost, increasing access and improving quality of care." That whopper of a lie pales even Obama's best : "If you like your doctor, you can keep him." But, Pelosi acknowledged that Democrats could have done a better job on messaging around the law over the years : “I would say that if there is one thing I would’ve done differently about the Affordable Care Act right from the start, was to message it in a much stronger way, to recognize the poisoning of the well that the Republicans were doing." YES, Obamacare's fatal flaws were all the work of the GOP, although not one Republican voted for Obamacare when, as Speaker, Pelosi waved the 2,000+ pages at House members in December, 2010, and told them : "You'll have to pass it to know what's in it." • In 2014, Senator Schumer said of Obamacare : "Democrats lost the opportunity the American people gave them. We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem -- health care reform." Now, as Democrat Senate Minority Leader, Schumer is saying Republicans will "rue the day" they repeal Obamacare : "It's a political nightmare for them....They'll be like the dog that caught the bus." We may ask, if Obamacare was so popular, why did Democrats lose their Senate majority over it? What Schumer really means is that Democrats now rue the day they passed this millstone of a health care law in the first place. • TheHll says that regardless of how the Affordable Care Act is changed, Republican leaders appear likely to eliminate the individual mandate that requires people to purchase health insurance or pay a tax penalty. At the same time, proposed GOP reforms retain the consumer protections in Obamacare that prohibit insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. • And, Mike Pence has emerged on the Republican side as the key Trump liaison with congressional Republicans -- for Obamacare and many other issues. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday : “When Mike Pence comes back to the conference, people get very excited because he was the conference chair, a lot of members had served with him. I think you're going to find this Vice President very active in the House and the Senate.” As the Obamacare fight heats up, that is very good news for President Trump, for the Republican Party and for all Americans.