So the deed is done and now the Senate gets to have their say. I think we may assume that President Trump will sign whatever comes his way on this, so the Senate is the real issue. I don’t have a sense of what the Senate will do with this. Will they rubber-stamp it? Vote it down? Mark it up so much that it must go to reconciliation? I suspect the last of those options is what will happen, but that is based only on a generic sense of what the Senate usually does.
What do you think?
The House plan will be disassembled and rebuilt with more subsidies, wealth transfer, different mandates, etc.
The Senate version of the Freedom Caucus: Cruz, R. Paul, M. Lee will be against it. McConnell will grow it further to recruit Manchin and maybe another Democrat so he can increase his bipartisan leadership bona fides.
Marco Rubio wil do whatever his handlers tell him to so he will support increasing the size, scope, etc. of the Senate version.
The Senate will pass their version and send it to the House where the entire HFC will oppose it requiring Ryan to grow it larger and get Democrats on board or it will die.
Either way using healthcare as a mechanism to enrich corporate giants and transfer wealth to a serfdom voting class will be memorialized forever. Hopefully that will hasten a currency crisis and we can start over.
I agree with your proposal that no matter what pile of burning garbage is heaped on the Resolute Desk in the oval office President Trump will gleefully sign it.
Additional prediction: Trump will never veto anything. It is all about getting things done.
We are well on our way to government medical care. They’ll make us all contractors (which will cost us taxpayers more than putting us on the payroll) and demand even more written proof of necessity of service. . .
I thought one of the Trump admin’s ideas was that this bill MUST lower healthcare costs to the consumer, and that plus tax cuts, which I think are next up, will get the economy booming. If the Senate lards it up, could it possibly lower costs? Wouldn’t seem likely. Maybe the bigly dealmaker will have to twist some arms.
“We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo. I think. I miss that strip.
All this can be true, but consider this:
The negotiation will be taking place just as re-election heats up for 2018.
I have not heard significant Senate opposing ideas, but just their usual need to bloviate and seem important.
If Trump has not wired McConnell into the current house proposal, he deserves to lose.
I expect the Senate to make noise, have some drama and add a few things and go along.
They are all realizing they cannot let it crash and the sooner they get the replacement underway the more time they will have to show it works.
If six months before 2018 election day premiums are going down, they win.
Allowing the states to walk away from OCare is genius. “If Your State Likes Obamacare, You Fools Can Keep Your Obamacare”
The Senate is stupid, but they can get motivated by self preservation.
I hope you’re right TKC.
The House bill reminds me of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The current healthcare system is going down either way. The replacement will likely be a nasty, expensive single-payer system. We’re most of the way there already.
For those of you who are still on Ricochet, I posted something about healthcare finance:
https://ricochet.com/427416/healthcare-costs/