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• David Harsanyi in The Federalist:
“At some point conservatives are going to have to take a page from Democrats and occasionally embrace incrementalism.”
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“Pragmatism is no sin,” Mr. Harsanyi reminds readers, urging conservatives to take advantage of the chance to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Senate bill’s imperfections pale in comparison to the mandate that Republicans have to repeal the “persistent failures of Barack Obama’s signature achievement.” Republicans were elected, he argues, to undo the health law, and they should act fast because this “might be the last chance to do anything.” Read more »
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• Henry Olsen in The Washington Post:
“What is more important, saving money or saving lives? Senate and House Republicans may be surprised to learn that for their idol, Ronald Reagan, this was never a question at all.”
Mr. Olsen is the author of a book on President Reagan’s political philosophy. In trying to channel the 40th president’s potential attitude toward federally subsidized health care, he cites Mr. Reagan’s remarks to the Conservative League of Minneapolis in 1961: “As one conservative let me say any person in the United States who requires medical attention and cannot provide it for himself should have it provided for him.” Read more »
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From the Left
• Zoë Carpenter in The Nation:
“The question is whether the GOP legislation improves on Obamacare and current coverage. It doesn’t come close — unless, of course, you happen to believe that we provide too much help to the poor and elderly, and not enough tax cuts to the wealthy.”
Ms. Carpenter agrees with some of her counterparts on the right when she argues that the Senate health care bill doesn’t repeal the Affordable Care Act. But she comes to a different conclusion, writing that “it just makes Obamacare worse.” Moreover, she argues, the Senate bill’s plan to phase out Medicaid is even more cruel than what was proposed in the House bill “because it affects people who are currently enrolled in the expansion, not just those who would become eligible in the future.” Read more »
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• Gene B. Sperling and Michael Shapiro in The Atlantic:
“The Republican plan may not allow insurers to discriminate against a pre-existing condition through the front door, but they’ve created a backdoor way in.”
Mr. Sperling (who served as an economic policy adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) and Mr. Shapiro (who was the economic foreign policy adviser for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign) write that the Senate’s bill is a disaster for Americans with pre-existing conditions. Under the bill, states will be able to force people with pre-existing conditions into “segregated markets that will lead them to pay far, far higher costs than everyone else.” The plan, they write, will take the country back to the “completely broken system” before the Affordable Care Act. Read more »
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• Neal Gabler in Moyers Company:
“In the end, Susan Collins is likely to retreat and join the conservatives in trashing health insurance.”
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Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, is often held up as a moderating voice in the G.O.P. But when it comes to health care, Mr. Gabler warns, Democrats should not put their faith in Ms. Collins’s ability to break from her party. For her and other moderate Republicans, he summarizes: “Polarization isn’t the problem. Orthodoxy is the problem.” Read more »
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• Ian Millhiser in ThinkProgress:
“‘Death spiral’ is actually the economic term [...] for what Trumpcare will do to health insurance markets.”
You often hear partisans on the right describe the Affordable Care Act as being in a “death spiral.” In this article, Mr. Millhiser re-appropriates the term and applies it to what the “Senate Trumpcare bill” will do to insurance markets. Obamacare’s individual mandate, he writes, solves the problem of insuring people with pre-existing conditions, and prevents the very “death spiral” guaranteed by driving people out of insurance markets. Read more »
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And Finally, From the Center:
• Editorial Board in USA Today:
“It deserves the old surgeon general’s warning about cigarettes: This product may be hazardous to your health.”
While it finds the Senate health care bill “marginally better” than the one passed in the House, the editorial board of USA Today concludes that the measure is a “tax cut masquerading as a health care plan.” They warn that the secretive process by which the bill was constructed, and a potential “flurry of last minute changes” — intended to give moderate senators cover in swing states — will lead to a bill that has the potential to wreak havoc in ways we cannot predict. Read more »
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• Nate Silver in FiveThirtyEight:
“Neither Democrats nor Republicans ought to be taking much for granted.”
Mr. Silver gets down to brass tacks and assesses the likelihood that the Senate will in fact pass the bill it released on Thursday. The betting markets, he notes, give roughly even odds that key provisions of the Affordable Care Act will be repealed before the end of the year. Throw in “the wild card of Trump,” and it’s anyone’s game. Read more »
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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/us/politics/gop-healthcare-bill-reactions.html