WaPo:
House GOP proposal to replace Obamacare sparks broad backlash
Republican efforts to revise the Affordable Care Act met with widespread resistance Tuesday from conservatives in and out of Congress, moderates in the Senate and key industry stakeholders, casting doubt on the plan’s chances just one day after House GOP leaders released it.
The most imminent and serious threat to the plan crafted by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was the growing backlash from conservative lawmakers and powerful outside groups who argue that the draft is nothing more than “Obamacare Lite,” a disparaging reference to the former president’s signature 2010 domestic achievement.
The lawmakers do not represent a majority of Republicans in either chamber of Congress, but there could be enough of them to scuttle any health-care bill they oppose — and several said Tuesday they intend to use that leverage to force major changes to the measures. Their efforts could begin Wednesday morning at markups of the legislation before the House Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce panels.
But President Trump said at a meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday afternoon that he would work with them to secure passage of their plan.
In the meantime, today’s pundit round-up is mostly twitter because the reaction on twitter to the Obamacare repeal and replace was priceless.
CBPP:
House GOP Medicaid Provisions Would Shift $370 Billion in Costs to States Over Decade
Converting Medicaid to a per capita cap would also make the program highly vulnerable to more cuts in the future. If the President and Congress delink federal Medicaid funding from the actual cost of providing health care to vulnerable Americans, they or future federal policymakers could come back and ratchet down the already arbitrary per beneficiary caps — by, for example, lowering the annual growth rate for the cap amounts — to pay for other priorities.
NY Times:
Millions Risk Losing Health Insurance in Republican Plan, Analysts Say
Martha Brawley of Monroe, N.C., said she voted for President Trump in the hope he could make insurance more affordable. But on Tuesday, Ms. Brawley, 55, was feeling increasingly nervous based on what she had heard about the new plan from television news reports. She pays about $260 per month for a Blue Cross plan and receives a subsidy of $724 per month to cover the rest of her premium. Under the House plan, she would receive $3,500 a year in tax credits — $5,188 less than she gets under the Affordable Care Act.
“I’m scared, I’ll tell you that right now, to think about not having insurance at my age,” said Ms. Brawley, who underwent a liver biopsy on Monday after her doctor found that she has an autoimmune liver disease. “If I didn’t have insurance, these doctors wouldn’t see me.
Jonathan Chait/New York Mag:
Trumpcare Is the Culmination of All the GOP’s Health-Care Lies
The Republican Party in its modern incarnation is incapable of writing a decent health-care bill, if we define “decent” to mean both some level of technical competence as well as morally decent. That inability has been clear to the party’s outside critics for many years. Republicans have fervently denied this, and probably believed their own denials. As a result they locked themselves into a course of action that forced them to propose a bill on a deadline. They seem to have realized the impossibility of the task midway through, but, unable to retreat on their commitment, they instead rushed out a plan that is shambolic and cruel.
The best indication of the quality of the plan is that it has drawn almost universal scorn from the health-care-policy community. It’s predictable that experts on the left would dislike Trumpcare. But the right seems barely any more favorable. Conservatives like Peter Suderman, Philip Klein, Bob Laszewski, and Avik Roy, who have spent years savaging Obamacare, are united in their disdain for its replacement.
Dear reluctant conditional Trump voter: consider what you have done in light of the GOP bill that takes your insurance in order to feed a 1%er tax cut. You can go to a town hall meeting and join us in opposition.
Ian Milhiser/Think Progress:
6 terrible ideas included in the House GOP’s health bill
These guys have no clue what they’re doing.
Avik Roy/Forbes:
House GOP's Obamacare Replacement Will Make Coverage Unaffordable For Millions -- Otherwise, It's Great
Philip Klein/WashExaminer:
Republican Obamacare plan signals that liberalism has already won
Bloomberg:
Conservatives Pan GOP Obamacare Replacement Plan as ‘Welfare’
Ryan Lizza/New Yorkier:
PAUL RYAN’S HEALTH-CARE VISE
Forced to navigate House Republican politics, the lobbying pressure from the insurance industry, and the obscure rules of the budgeting process, Ryan has produced a bill that nobody would ever propose as a sane solution to the problems with Obamacare. Its only chance is speed. If Ryan can rush and muscle it through the House and Mitch McConnell can do the same in the Senate, it might end up on Trump’s desk. But the more scrutiny this House bill is subject to, the more likely it is to share the fate of most efforts at health-care reform and die somewhere on its journey to the Senate, and perhaps long before then. If his health-care-reform effort fails, Ryan himself may not survive as the House leader. Meadows and his colleagues catapulted Ryan to the Speakership, and they still have the power to bring him down.
Axios:
The Democratic digital plan to beat Trump
[which includes]
Daily, consistent and long-term digital communications with two groups: 2012 voters who didn't vote in 2016 "who should be for Democrats." The second group is Obama-Trump voters, not just in the Midwest but in places like the exurbs of Florida, where Clinton's performance was significantly lower than Trump's.
Reaching out to regretful Trump voters and telling them when the President fails them: "we will use peer-to-peer applications that leverage users' social networks to share content organically, and experiment with content delivery to break through silos and find new solutions for reaching audiences."
This is important and fits with the idea that shaming them is bad policy. There are not hard core true believer Trump voters, nor does this abandon our base nor does it ignore recruitment of sympathetic non-voters. It’s smart strategy to complement a larger approach to our voters. I endorse it.