The Republican campaign to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act ended abruptly Friday afternoon. Speaker Paul D. Ryan declared, after aborting a vote on the GOP plan, that “Obamacare is the law of the land.” The failure of the GOP campaign offers several lessons for understanding the first two […] Read more »
A postponed health-care vote, a big GOP embarrassment and no good options ahead
… For seven years, Republican politicians have made one overriding bargain with their conservative constituency, which was that they would repeal Obamacare as their first order of business if they ever had the power to do so. Now that they have the power, they still haven’t found a way to […] Read more »
Trump Has No Good Options On Health Care
Sometimes in a poker hand, you find yourself with no good choices. You’ve invested a lot of money in the pot. But then your opponent unexpectedly makes a large bet and you have a marginal hand. Your options — folding, calling and reraising (as a bluff) — are all money-losing […] Read more »
Can Trump Support the GOP Health-Care Plan and Still Hold On to His Voters?
… Ryan’s deference to Trump’s nationalism on trade and immigration, and Trump’s acceptance of Ryan’s libertarian approach to health care, has left the GOP with a policy mix crisscrossed by contradiction. In an interview, Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress, noted that the Trump-like European populist […] Read more »
Fox News Poll: 34% of voters favor GOP health care plan
Half of American voters agree with the Republican charge that ObamaCare will collapse if it’s left as is. At the same time, most give positive marks to their health insurance and over half oppose the GOP plan to replace the current health care law. … President Trump gets negative marks […] Read more »
Trumpcare: Is this what populism looks like?
The battle in Congress over how to replace former President Obama’s healthcare law is about much more than health insurance. It’s the first legislative skirmish in a larger struggle over what Trumpism, Donald Trump’s presidential agenda, will turn out to be in practice. Can Trump succeed in remaking the Republican […] Read more »