Thread: Trump shifts blame to conservatives on health care bill failure

Trump shifts blame to conservatives on health care bill failure

By Katherine Faulders
Mar 26, 2017, 10:03 AM ET

President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Sunday morning to call out the House Freedom Caucus, saying Democrats are “smiling” because the group of conservative lawmakers' opposition to the Republican proposal on health care “saved” Obamacare and Planned Parenthood.

“Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!” the president tweeted.

The tweet marked a change from Friday when GOP leaders called off a vote in the House on the American Health Care Act because they didn't have enough support to pass the bill.

The president at that time laid the blame on Democrats. "We had no Democrat support," Trump said Friday. "They weren't going to give us a single vote so it's a very difficult thing to do."

Trump also on Friday said he didn't feel betrayed by House Freedom Caucus members who opposed the bill.

“They’re friends of mine,” the president said of the conservative lawmakers. “I’m disappointed because we could have had it."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump...ry?id=46382720

In my opinion, Republicans in Congress made some terrible political mistakes. They were united on the basics of repealing the mandates and tax penalties in Phase 1 and seemed committed to passing a repeal of McCarran-Ferguson in Phase 3. Those were positives. Then they wanted to tackle other problems without solid solutions such a converting subsidies to tax credits which were bad for poor and lower middle income groups, changing Medicaid to block grants to states with caps which frightened states and our poorest Americans, changing some of the ratios that worried and scared seniors, and then stripping the assured essential benefits of insurance policies that startled and shocked everyone.

There is nothing wrong with most of those goals but not at a time when the economy has not been fixed, when jobs still aren't there, when wages still aren't rising enough for people to feed themselves, pay their mortgages or rent and keep the utilities on let alone cover thousands of dollars a year of health insurance premiums.

That all said was it better to pass it than not to pass it? Yes, it was better to pass it with all that because of the benefits of the original premises, to repeal the mandates on individual and employers and the tax penalties as punishment. With the freedom to choose without penalty, this market force brings down the cost of insurance and drives it at the retail level. This builds the national support to repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act and restore federal consumer protections under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Because when you do this, the rest of it works itself out.

The conservatives in the Freedom Caucus and some other groups became obsessed with "conscience" over something besides their namesake, "freedom", because if they really believed in "freedom", they would have passed the Phase 1 bill on that premise alone. It really doesn't matter whether government writes a subsidy check or tax credit check for costs it mandates. The solution is to remove the mandates and the costs from them go away. It doesn't really matter whether government is funding the health insurance industry or 501 C 3's are treating uninsured patients in their emergency rooms, other than the latter is far cheaper in the long run. It doesn't really matter whether Americans are underwriting someone else's medical care through insurance premiums or government checks, that's all phony policy wonkiness from people who don't live in the real world and don't earn the income to pay either one themselves.

Trump understands all this, which is why he wants to get on down the road to tax reform, fixing the trade deals, growing the economy, creating good jobs, and actually cure the cause of the "health care crisis" which is lack of jobs, hours, sustainable wages and good employer benefit plans that includes company provided health insurance.

So these few who voted their "conscience" and killed the bill let freedom die, the very freedom they claim they formed their caucus to stand up for, because if you believe in freedom, you would have voted for the Phase 1 bill for the freedom it restored on that premise alone. But like all phonies in our Congress, when it was time and your opportunity to actually stand up for freedom and ring its bell, you sat down and put your bells away.

And for that alone, SHAME ON YOU!!!

Do we even know what was in the bill?

The President and lawmakers should spend more time, write a bill that makes sense, that is simple. They should then present it to the American people AND then vote on it.

They didn't do that -

If this country doesn't get past the political fighting we are not going to do well.

We need a brains trust so that actual problems are solved---not merely one side convincing the 'electorate' that is is only they who have the answers, and the other side is completely to blame. What we' have now is some type of litmus test of ideological purity going on, on both sides.

Just as Information (internet) Technology has gone way beyond what people would have imagined even as recently as 1990, Medical Technology is on the verge of doing that same thing. And this will be very economically beneficial----if we can get past the intervening stage where people are sensing big disparities and asking who is going to help them? And this is true of other technologies that our industrialized society is dependent upon.

It really doesn't cost much to establish a brains trust. We already have some of it in the National Laboratories. I know the Parties right now are aggregates of cobbled together vested interests. I don't care if it was FDR who came up with the term "brains trust" the GOP should just follow suit and put it together. FDR also came up with the idea of limiting clandestine, unannounced foreign activists in our federal government, too.

I've seen this in local issues---and significant ones involving at least a few billion dollars per shot, and also controlling the long term impacts for our local area, or state.

I look at politics as a wagon drawn by two unruly, contentious, biting and snapping horses. For awhile one horse (party) is producing the good ideas but they get carried away by their true believers and fanatics. That Party will get kicked out, as the other one re -organizes to figure out how to pull the wagon ahead a little further. That is until their true believers and fanatics dominate too much, and the public loses trust in them.

The GOP should put together a brains trust that actually seeks out technical solutions that the public can trust. This probably means ignoring some of the vested interests that finance their campaigns. I've seen people locally put up various good ideas on some things that can reduce costs, but we need to get above the ideological purity.

Originally Posted by nntrixie

Do we even know what was in the bill?

The President and lawmakers should spend more time, write a bill that makes sense, that is simple. They should then present it to the American people AND then vote on it.

They didn't do that -

Yes, there is a bill, they wrote a bill, the bill has been on line for weeks. The original bill was very simple. Freedom Caucus made it more complicated, but overall it was still very simple. So, yes, they did do that. So there was no failure on anyone's part in that regard. It's bill number HR 1628.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-...bill/1628/text

I just don't believe they could come up with a good bill in that period of time.

The only disparity between the so called two parties is how they can vie for the monies from the lobbyist.

They may be competing with each other for the monies, but their rhetoric is the only real difference.

If that were not so, our country would be in better condition than it is.

There is no "good bill" with regards to health insurance that solves the problem, because the health "care" issue is just a symptom of the much larger problem of poverty, unemployment, low wages, massive immigration both legal and illegal, and bad trade deals sucking all our good jobs out of the country, the good full-time jobs with over-time, the good full-time jobs with employer paid health insurance and many other company benefits. Yes, there is one problem with the health insurance industry before Obamacare, it's a problem we still have, but is one that Trump wants to fix, and that is the insurance exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act through the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, which Trump wants to repeal, which needs to be repealed, and which must be repealed. The problem with Obamacare itself is the mandates on individuals and employers with tax penalties trying to enforce the mandates. The Phase 1 bill, HR 1628 repealed those mandates and tax penalties.

So what Trump wanted to achieve with the Phase 1 bill that was really Ryan's and members of Congress but that also had input and provisions from Tom Price, Trump's new Secretary of HHS, is fine for a Phase 1 bill. Phase 2 is regulations that don't involve Congress and the Phase 3 bills are already drafted to "erase the lines" (repeal McCarran-Ferguson), expand HSA's, Lou Barletta's bill to disallow any tax credits for health care being paid to illegal aliens, plus another bill that allows the Executive Branch to negotiate drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid which has nothing to do with Obamacare, this is a provision of law that was passed during the Bush Administration to gain support for the prescription coverage for seniors.

What this handful of Republicans decided for some untold reason is they liked the status quo of Obamacare more than the Phase 1 bill the primary focus of which was to repeal the mandates and tax penalties that are stifling our economy and job creation and move forward quickly with that in hand to the tax reform bill. Underlying all of this, it was reported that this same group wasn't really negotiating on the Phase 1 bill, but actually extorting their vote for it in exchange for commitments from Trump on many other issues unrelated to health care.