This time, House Republicans say, they're really going to have an Obamacare replacement plan. It's not like all the other dozens—literally dozens—of times in the past six years since they've been promising it. This time it'll really happen "soon,” but don't expect it to actually be a real, actual, legislative kind of thing.
"Give us a little time, another month or so," House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) told reporters this week. "I think we’ll be pretty close to a Republican alternative."
Upton is one member of a four-person task force that is supposed to come up with a replacement plan for the healthcare law, at the behest of Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). For now, the group is still in "listening mode," Upton said. When asked who they are listening to, Upton said: "You name it – the world." […]
Even now, the healthcare reform task force is not expected to produce an actual bill to replace the law, Ryan’s office said Friday.
“[Legislative] text is not necessary to show exactly what you’re going to do,” spokeswoman AshLee Strong said. “The point is not to have a vote on the floor and have it go nowhere.”
Sure. Of course, this time they do have Speaker Paul Ryan and his mission statement. Surely that'll make the difference! What they don't have, however, is time. They couldn't do anything legislative on health care even if they wanted to. Between today and the election, they're scheduled to work just some 11 weeks out of the 29 before Nov. 8. Between now and Oct. 1, when the new fiscal year starts and they have to pass some kind of spending bill, they have about 60 days to figure out what that's going to be. Given that they haven't been able to do that in the three-and-a-half months they've been working on it so far, fat chance they manage to get anything else accomplished.
That's just logistics, though. The other part of if is that they have had six years to come up with something and come up empty. Six. Years. And nothing. There's no non-magical reason to think this year will be any different.