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WASHINGTON
― Reporters love to call new legislative proposals “dead on arrival.”
It sounds dramatic, like a cop show. The Clintons’ health care plan was
“dead on arrival.” Every Social …
Don’t Call Trumpcare ‘Dead On Arrival.’ Nobody Meant It To Live.
And as a zombie plan, it’s already stumbling.
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WASHINGTON ― Reporters love
to call new legislative proposals “dead on arrival.” It sounds dramatic,
like a cop show. The Clintons’ health care plan was “dead on arrival.”
Every Social Security reform since the 1980s has been “dead on arrival.”
Barack Obama’s Asian trade deal was “dead on arrival.”
Well, the new Obamacare
“repeal and replace” plan, assembled by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)
and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, isn’t “dead on
arrival.”
Something has to be alive before it can be declared dead.
But if we go with the idea that President Donald Trump and his circle know what they’re doing, then this is meant to be a Zombie Plan.
They’ve put forth a
bare-bones proposal to provide cover for Republicans eager to “abolish
Obamacare” now, but wary of being accused in the next election of
weakening or eliminating health care coverage. In this scenario, the GOP
will use the greased-skids procedure of reconciliation to abolish what
they despise about Obamacare ― taxes and mandates ― while vowing to
support some living, fleshed-out version of the new proposal later this
year or next.
There is a perhaps fatal
flaw in such a strategy: the new proposal’s almost total disconnect from
substantive and political reality.
Substantively, it isn’t
really a proposal because even Price admitted that he has no idea what
it will cost. He also has no idea how to pay for it. That is for others,
starting with the scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office, to
determine. (Will they supply real facts or alternative ones?)
The plan, such as it is,
will surely not “cover everybody,” as Trump promised it would, unless
“everybody” means well-off people who can actually find a plan that
covers their medical costs.
Nor does it actually, fully
or anytime soon do what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) vowed repeatedly a new plan would do: demolish Obamacare “root
and branch.” It’s more a medium plowing.
As HuffPost notes
elsewhere, no one believes Ryan’s claim that a refundable tax credit
for non-taxpayers is anything other than a cloaked form of welfare
payment.
Republicans acknowledge ―
some publicly, some privately ― that politically the optics of the plan
could be real bad for a party, and maybe even a president, who claim to
be tribunes of the people. For example, Trump says he will muscle Big
Pharma into selling medicine in bulk. It’s a sensible, long overdue move
and one worthy of an actual autocratic populist. But even if he
succeeds, the government’s savings on Medicare will primarily replace
revenue lost by ending Obamacare’s payroll tax surcharge on high-income
earners and its not-yet-implemented tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans.
In other words, the Palm
Beach Populist will wring cash from Big Pharma so that he can give it
to, among others, CEOS of Big Pharma.
The changes penciled in on
Medicaid expansion are a political mess in all directions. The tea party
wants that Washington-controlled $20-billion-a-year cash flow to the
states stopped yesterday. But much of the rest of the GOP,
including some otherwise quite conservative governors of red states,
desperately want to keep that money coming, just with fewer strings.
They’ve got sick or vulnerable people in need of help that they say they
care about, and least five million could lose coverage if that Medicaid
money stops.
Obamacare, however much of a
mess it has been in places, has helped millions of real people. Its
polling numbers are now positive enough that Republicans are getting
skittish.
The Democrats aren’t about
to help them. For one, if nothing happens, if no legislation passes, the
status quo is ... Obamacare. In our new semi-parliamentary system of
government ― in which all relevant political disagreements are
intra-party ― the Democrats for now are happy to be bystanders, jeering
from afar.
So what are Trump and his Merry Trumpsters up, besides the zombie strategy, and will this thing ever be alive?
Well, they had to get
something ― anything ― started, if only because ending Obamacare remains
an emotional issue with his core supporters. Opposing the Affordable
Care Act is what got the tea party rolling. Trump’s inner circle was
also in a hurry to do something that could plausibly be called real
governance, not just angry early-morning Twitter rants of alternative
facts and unsupported accusations.
If he doesn’t like how
things progress or what the finished product becomes, he can ― and will ―
blame (or let others blame) Ryan, McConnell, Price, Senate Democratic
Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus
or Shadow President Obama.
And if you know how Trump
operated in business, you know that he will not take responsibility for
any deal until it is final ― and even then won’t necessarily own the
deal he just made. Don’t forget: In recent years, he mostly put his name
on other people’s buildings.
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