Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Thursday that Senate Republicans would “probably move on to other issues” rather than attempting again to fully repeal Obamacare in 2018.
In an interview with NPR, McConnell said Republicans’ overhaul of the tax code — which repeals Obamacare’s crucial individual mandate, in addition to showering corporations and the wealthy in tax breaks — “takes the heart out of Obamacare.”
Without that provision, which penalized individuals who did not have health insurance and also did not qualify for a fee waiver, experts have estimated that costs on Obamacare’s individual markets will skyrocket, especially for those with higher medical expenses. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in November that repealing the individual mandate would leave 13 million more people uninsured by 2027 compared to the status quo.
“We obviously were unable to completely repeal and replace with a 52-48 Senate,” McConnell said, before referring to the election of Sen.-elect Doug Jones (D-AL) earlier this month. “We’ll have to take a look at what that looks like with a 51-49 Senate. But I think we’ll probably move on to other issues.”
Separately, the majority leader said “[w]e want to steady the insurance markets if we can … and I think we’ll probably be addressing that part of healthcare sometime next year.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) originally conditioned her vote in support of Republicans’ tax bill on three provisions to stabilize the insurance market: First, temporarily restoring subsidies to insurance companies ended earlier this year by President Donald Trump; second, establishing a temporary national reinsurance program; and third, preventing deep cuts to Medicare triggered by the tax bill’s huge expense.
She eventually settled for McConnell and Trump’s promised future support for the measures, though House Republicans have said the first two are dead on arrival. The House voted Thursday to avoid the Medicare cuts by including a waiver for the Pay-As-You-Go Act, or PAYGO, in the continuing resolution they approved to fund the government.
Sure you will…
In other words,Susan Collins is a big fat liar…
I certainly hope Pres. Trump’s tax plan achieves all he wishes, and more, but I see it dimmed just a tad by the Senate’s failure to eliminate the “Carried Interest” loophole, and the Child Tax Credit omission, allowing illegal alien parents to receive these benefits.
As I am writing this post, something has just occurred to me. What do these two omissions have in common, something that may well explain why they were left out of the conference negotiations? Both can be fixed by a simple phone call from the president!
Shorter Mitch: can’t root out Obamacare as it’s too deeply entrenched, so call it a victory and hope no one calls them out. It’s sustained massive blows, but is still around waiting for Dems to fix it.
Whatever the ACA is now, it’s Trumpcare going forward. You broke it, you bought it, Mitch.