It's back to the drawing board for Republicans after the Congressional Budget Office
determined their latest bright idea, for an Obamacare replacement bill would cause one million workers to lose their insurance and increase the deficit by $74 billion over 10 years. That's not all. It would
increase the number of uninsured by 500,000 and push that many more onto Medicaid. Oops. Now Majority Leader Eric Cantor is
looking for another plan.
House Republican leaders will meet Friday to begin crafting an alternative to Democrats’ health care law, but they face a slate of challenges from inside and outside the conference to advancing a credible plan.
Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., will meet privately with relevant committee heads, his staff said. Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline of Minnesota, as well as Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp and Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, both of Michigan, will attend.
Cantor has pledged a vote to not just repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law but also replace it with Republican legislation this year. And although Cantor said in a memo to members Friday that leaders are continuing “work to finalize” the bill, the process is far from its final stages.
As Jonathon Cohn
says, Republicans are learning that "governing is hard." They haven't been doing much of that lately, particularly when it comes to health care. Until the law was actually implemented, they got by just by keeping the base riled up with "repeal." That just won't cut it anymore, now that millions of people have enrolled in health insurance or finally been able to get on Medicaid, and now that everyone with insurance has access to preventive care without copays and the assurance of knowing that they can't lose their insurance if serious illness strikes.
Those are issues that the Republicans give lip service to, but refuse to acknowledge that have to be paid for one way or another. Since Medicare for all wasn't an option, employer and individual mandates are what we got. There aren't a whole lot of alternatives that will actually add up. Now, having things add up hasn't actually been much of an issue for the GOP thus far (see all of Rep. Paul Ryan's sham "budgets"), but now it is. They might actually finally be coming to the realization that you can't have stuff without raising the revenue to pay for it.
