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The GOP's Obamacare replacement plan fantasy
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Opinion
Michael A. Cohen
The GOP’s Obamacare replacement plan fantasy
(J. Scott Applewhite/AP
House Speaker Paul Ryan,
accompanied by House majority leader Kevin McCarthy, met with reporters
on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to discuss efforts to replace the Affordable
Care Act, following a closed-door meeting with the GOP caucus.
Like these mythical creatures, a Republican health care plan has become folklore in the strange netherworld called Capitol Hill. There, a replacement plan is the fairy-tale alternative to the evil Obamacare — the health care plan Republicans hate with a passion and have pledged to repeal. But this is what it’s like to live in fantasy world: believing unusual things that ordinary people know aren’t true.
As Republicans have increasingly come to the uncomfortable realization that taking away health care coverage from as many as 30 million people could be a threat to their very existence (i.e., their political careers), they have begun searching desperately for a magical solution. There was talk of delay or subsidizing insurance companies, and now odd creatures, with peculiar names like Corker, Portman, Collins, Cassidy, and Murkowski have asked their leader (the one they call McConnell) to delay repeal for a few weeks so a replacement plan can be identified.
According to Corker, “You would think that after six years we would have a pretty good sense of what we would like to do.” In a non-bizarro world, one would think that. But the Republican-controlled Capitol Hill has for six years been a magical place where logic, facts, and real world impact of policy choices dare not tread.
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