The GOP's Obamacare Problem

[Green Man]

The GOP's health problem: They like big chunks of the Affordable Care Act

Drew Altman, Kaiser Family Foundation
Dec 18

Now that a Texas judge has ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional — all because of its individual mandate — Republicans may find themselves wishing for a different outcome.

The big picture: There is little hope of a deal with Democrats on health reform in a divided Congress if the decision is upheld. Democrats will now use the 2020 campaign to paint Republicans as threatening a host of popular provisions in the ACA. And here’s the kicker: protections for pre-existing conditions, the provision that played such a big role in the midterms, is not even the most popular one.

Here are just some of the more popular provisions that would be eliminated — in order of their popularity, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's November tracking poll:

• Young adults can remain on their parents' health insurance policies until age 26: 82% of the public supports this, including 66% of Republicans.
• Subsidies for lower and moderate income people: 81% support this, including 63% of Republicans.
• Closing the "donut hole" so there's no gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage: 81% like this, as do 80% of Republicans.
• Eliminating costs for many preventive services: 79% support this, as do 68% of Republicans.
• Medicaid expansion: 77% like it, as do 55% of Republicans.

The list goes on, but notably, further down but still very popular: 65% of the public supports protecting people with pre-existing conditions, as do 70% of Democrats, 66% of independents and 58% of Republicans. The fact the pre-existing conditions does not top the list shows how popular all of the other provisions are.

The Republican attorneys general brought their lawsuit in a different political environment, when Republicans held the House, Senate and the White House. If that had continued, they could have had reason to hope that a ruling in their favor, if upheld by higher courts, could have helped them achieve their goal of repeal and replace legislation.

The bottom line: Their world has changed politically, with Democrats preparing to take control of the House next year, and Republicans may have been better off settling for the repeal of the mandate penalty that Congress already passed. The mandate was by far the least popular part of the law and gave them something to crow about. Now, they may have bought more than they bargained for.

https://www.axios.com/aca-ruling-republicans-politics-changed-f54f7a3f-53f4-47f2-9deb-2c4c424534b6.html

[Buster]

members of both parties wanted it--the republicans could have stopped it from the beginning but didn't

IMO much of what goes on in DC is like professional wrestling--it is scripted and choreographed with the outcome predetermined

[The Cub]

What problem?

Simply run it up to the SCOTUS....and let's see Roberts dance.

Uphold decision of lower court.....Throw Obamacare out the window.

Return to free market....and let the Deceivocrat demogogues wail.

End of discussion.

[Hoppalong]

Well HAVE to keep some of the healthcare in PLACCE. THE EXISTING illness says. The donut hole closure stays as in 2020 it Ends anyways. The donut hole goes bye bye .So YES most of what was listed STAYS PUT~! And then everyone is happy. Let the free market take over and the costs will come down.Also a few other things must go as well but that list of things STAYS PUT.

[Bear]

I don’t believe a single poll stat from the original article. Progressive media makes this stuff up and presents it as fact.
its nothing but fabrication and fantasy.

[Green Man]

I don’t believe a single poll stat from the original article. Progressive media makes this stuff up and presents it as fact. its nothing but fabrication and fantasy.

Would you believe the results that a Rasmussen poll reported? They consistently gave candidate Trump better poll numbers more of the time than most of the others.

Is all news is fake? Only news that doesn't fit with your confirmation bias? Even Fox News is now being denounced by some true believers as anti-Trump.

It's no secret that a lot of Republicans ran for reelection with platforms that insisted that all along they had been for the provisions of the ACA that their constituents overwhelmingly prefer. (They typically avoided the terms ACA and Obamacare.) We're still waiting for Trump's health care plan that he promised would be better and cheaper. Meanwhile, where to you fall relative to the (fake) results reported above? Do you want to keep that protections and coverages that the (fake) republican respondents support?

[Bear]

Fox serves as mock opposition, while reinforcing the entire liberal agenda. The only conservative information outlet remaining is the internet, and the progs are working overtime to silence that.
But it more to the point, not everything is wrong with zerocare. But the government cannot force someone to buy something they don’t want. The insurance lobby has done very well, made themselves very wealthy by working with government to force purchase of their “service”.
Its wrong, unconstitutional, and the judge ruled correctly.

[Earl Sinclair]

Green Man - you have to admit that being skeptical of main stream media polls is a prudent thing. I'm sorry, but CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and others have really lost their credibility over the past few years.

You, yourself, had to cite Rasmussen's "outlier" poll in your response, thereby tacitly acknowledging that poll manipulation might be a thing.


Earl

[solderguy]

The main stream polls predicted the Blue Wave in the last election. Rasmussen missed it:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...l_ballot_nov05

[Green Man]

The main stream polls predicted the Blue Wave in the last election. Rasmussen missed it:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...l_ballot_nov05

That highlights the difficulty of doing polls these days. Landlines are dying, people with cellphones frequently decline calls from unknown callers. Polling organizations don't want to share their methods for correction those skewed responses that they get. Are older Americans overrepresented in polls? Nobody knows.

It's a lot more likely that polls are just plain wrong than intentionally manipulated to deceive.

If you're concerned about intentional manipulation by MSM you can do your homework; original sources are often a matter of public record... court judgements, election results, the congressional record....

As with science, the guys who overturns the dominate paradigm is celebrated. That's difficult to do but it can be done. Who or what is that who's doing that? Probably not Alex Jones.