It's deja vu all over again as Republicans squabble over how—and even whether—to replace Obamacare. They've had more than 60 repeal votes now, and have yet to come up with a replacement plan, much less vote on one. Now they're divided over whether to bother with it at all, yet another wedge in the House/Senate Republican rift.
"We have to work together to have that bill and that's what this process is," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said of the effort to draft a consensus ObamaCare replacement bill this year. "We want to get one as soon as possible. I think it's very positive for us to show the alternatives, especially [given] what the American public has seen about ObamaCare." […]
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), however, wants 2016 to be a referendum on Obama's record. He prefers sticking to the basic blocking and tackling of government: passing the annual appropriations bills. [...]
"Until we are in a position to get a new president who will actually sign the repeal of ObamaCare, the president is going to veto it. So it's really more of a hypothetical," said Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), McConnell's top deputy.
That's as good an excuse as any. The reality is that they have no plan and can create no plan that does what Obamacare has done in terms of getting people covered and not completely blowing up the deficit in doing it. They want to keep the stuff that's popular—no more pre-existing conditions, people remaining on their family plans until age 26, etc.—but do it without the actual stuff that makes it work, like the individual mandate that puts enough healthy people into the pool to make it affordable for the sick people.
Instead, they're still messing around with the same old ideas: selling insurance across state lines (so that all insurers could flock to the states that have the worst regulation and consumer protections); giving people tax credits for health insurance that will cost more and cover less once insurers can get away with it; and setting up high risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions, the system for trying to get coverage to these folks we had before Obamacare and which failed. None of these ideas, even combined, create a comprehensive structure that can begin to replace Obamacare and retain private health insurance. There really isn't another way to do that.
Which McConnell very well knows, and he knows once all of that bullshit stuff is put into a "plan," Democrats will have something very concrete to attack. It's his members that will be most vulnerable to those attacks. It's his leadership that's on the line. Ultimately, even if the House comes up with something, he likely won't actually bring it to a vote. Which provides the perfect excuse for House Republicans to do what they've been doing for the past six years on replacement—nothing.