Wednesday, January 3, 2018

The GOP's Obamacare dilemma

In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, the Republicans have an Obamacare dilemma on their hands.  As politico.com reports, the GOP is divided on what comes next following the repeal of the individual mandate.  They "don't want a repeat of last year's Obamacare fumble," but "they also don't want to take repeal off the table":
The reality is [that] the GOP is so divided on Obamacare, [it doesn't] have the votes to achieve either objective – repeal or stabilization.  That means former President Barack Obama's signature legislative accomplishment could keep limping along, crippled by the repeal of the individual mandate in the tax law but lifted by the surprisingly strong enrollment for the coming year.
The Alexander-Murray insurer cost-sharing subsidies bill, aka stabilization bill, has run into opposition among House conservatives, who, as Politico notes, are reluctant "to do anything that props up the health law," including a "bailout" for insurance companies.
In the meantime, "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is working on resurrecting" the Graham-Cassidy health care bill, which was considered but then shelved last September due to a lack of sufficient votes.  The Graham-Cassidy bill would "turn the federal funding for Medicaid expansion and the subsidies into a block grant program" to the states, among other wide-ranging reforms, as summarized at cnn.money.com when the bill was last considered.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/01/the_gops_obamacare_dilemma.html#ixzz539AOe1d6 

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