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[Netherscourge]

They can't claim the CBO is just "guessing" this time.

If you repeal Obamacare with no replacement, millions of people will lose coverage in a matter of weeks and months. Period.

This is not an estimate. That is an assessment.

GoP can't hide from that.

Sorry, Turtle. Keep trying to climb over that fence.

 

[Stumpokapow]

The CBO creates headlines and talking points by providing these estimated numbers to the outcome of passing the bills. These help shape public opinion (and awareness) of the bills. I just got a notification from my local news app about 32 million people losing insurance by 2026 under the proposed repeal. People who don't spend a lot of time on GAF and therefore aren't as up to date on Congress' legislative efforts as our brilliant minds might find such a notification to be pretty useful. It's not hard to understand.

Err, I'm not critiquing the CBO doing its legal job. I'm critiquing the feigned ignorance of "Boy howdy, we won't know until the CBO gets back to us". The stated objective of the ACA is to achieve full insurance coverage levels by spending money, and the stated objective of the AHCA is to stop spending that money and lower coverage levels to what they are before the ACA. The exact formulation is relatively secondary to this.

(Also, far from being valuable injections into the debate, I think the repeated re-scoring of a bunch of incrementally different bills just causes people to check out because "Wait, didn't I already hear this? Is this the bill that's dead or the other one? Is my news app broken?" Zooming out to the bigger picture is more likely to keep people engaged and focused on what's actually at stake.)

 

[Ponn]

It's weird that the revised CBO score stuff for the tweaked bills is something people care about at all.

It's obvious that no matter what tweaks you make, if you end the mandate, the medicaid expansion, and subsidies for the exchanges, the total number of uninsured will jump to the ballpark of the number of uninsured from before the PPACA. All of the Republican pitches have involved these three features, and surely any future pitch would also. Further, it's obvious that most of the money and most of the numbers are in the Medicaid expansion, not the mandate/subsidies. Twiddling a few billion here and a few billion there, offering little tweaks to the timing here and there, etc. don't materially change the stakes.

When they announce the next bill that does the exact same thing but adds a new clause that takes one cent from the National Endowment for the Arts and adds it to the Bomb Iran fund, we don't need to wait for CBO projections to find out that it will still cause 20-odd million uninsured and save a few hundred billion.

They are for the moderates. They are like the undecided voters, they lack critical thinking skills and need things spelled out for them exactly before they decide to disregard something and continue to support the GOP because of Hillarys emails.

 

[Shadybiz]

Is it usually a good strategy to kill the people who vote for you, or??

 

[Haly]

If they knock off 3-5 million of the uninsured number with every revision, it'll only take 5 more revisions for it to cover everyone!

 

[Gallbaro]

It is such a shame that we have people actively trying to remove insurance coverage from so many. Obamacare is a very shitty instrument, leaves a lot to be desired and in any sane political space would be under the same consistent attack because it is shit and needs drastic improvement. -to get more people covered and lower costs.

 

[Deuce Deuce]

Is it usually a good strategy to kill the people who vote for you, or??

If you kill more of the ones that don't.

 

[NoName999]

This probably won't pass. McConnell just burned way too many bridges. At least according to a former Senate staff member as explained on Twitter.

Having spent countless hours listening to McConnell & years working with his office, I'd like to offer a few thoughts on tonight's news. 1/

First & foremost, what we're witnessing is an unprecedented, full-blown rebellion by Republican senators against their leader, Mc Connell. 2/

I worked for Reid for years. Democratic senators criticized him occasionally, although they'd usually joke about it.
Nothing like this. 3/

Reid's status as leader was based on a mixture of love & respect from the caucus.
Mc Connell's, only on respect - very little love. 4/

Mc Connell's political victories have come at a steep price for the institution. He has taken power & influence away from other senators. 5/

His fellow Rs did not like losing their individual power, but they were willing to abide it as long as Mc Connell delivered victories. 6/

The ? has always been, what happen to Mc Connell when he hits a dry spell - especially one that his scorched-Earth tactics precipitated. 7/

We're seeing indications of that tonight. This sounds like trolling but I'm honestly shocked at how nasty Repuicans are being towards him 8/

Accusing your leader of a "significant breach of trust" is about as harsh as it gets in Senate-speak. 9/

Senators want to get things done. Mc Connell's pitch to his fellow Republicans was always, let's get power & THEN we'll get things done. 10/

Their problem now is that the tactics Mc Connell employed to accrue power undercut their ability to get things done.
Earth, scorched. 11/

Reid employed dramatic tactics at times, but he was able to balance it with empowering senators and delivering accomplishments. 12/

Suffice to say, Mc Connell is finding that balance harder to strike. 13/

On prospects for repeal, I agree with everyone who's saying keep the pressure up- this bill is the Terminator. It will keep coming back. 14/

Mc Connell will play off this setback in that weird way that DC reporters intrepidly persist in finding charming. (I don't see it.) 15/

But make no mistake - this is a MASSIVE humiliation for Mc Connell. And he'll spend every waking moment plotting his redemption. 16/

Lastly: the breadth of the rebellion is fascinating and suggests that this was coordinated. Lee/Moran jumped first to give others cover. 17/

That prospect is truly jaw-dropping: a COORDINATED rebellion against Mc Connell?
Six months into unified Republican control??
Yeesh. 18/

I wonder about the 2 cancelled weeks of recess- will that still happen?
Public statements aside, members HATE having recess cancelled 19/

That seemed punitive. Mc Connell's announcement came after a conference meeting that did not go well for him.
I wonder how it fits in. 20/

I'm just rambling now.
But boy howdy, what a thing to witness.
From the savior of the Senate, no le
ss.
Who could have predicted? 21/
CODA: This feels punitive too, since moderate Rs have already rejected this approach. I neglected to mention... 22/

My statement on an upcoming vote to repeal #Obamacare◊
Mc Connell is known within the Senate to have an extremely top-down leadership style. Cornyn, his #2, usually has no idea what's going on 23/

You could compile an amazing list of all the times Cornyn was obviously, publicly out of the loop. Mc Connell doesn't trust anyone. 24/

The stories go that Mc Connell will literally email orders to his deputies, including Cornyn. They have no input into his process. 25/

Compare that to Reid, who would run every - and I mean EVERY - decision by Durbin, Schumer and Murray, and... 26/

... most big decisions by his broader leadership team (~10 members) and chairs/rankings and THEN get the buy-in of the full caucus. 27/

Would Reid have loved to make decisions by himself and then deliver marching orders to his caucus? Maybe. But that's not how it works. 28/

You have to get broad that kind of broad buy-in because every senator considers themselves a regent. And they have power. 29/

For all his talk about deliberative process, Mc Connell does not appear to have a deliberative process within his own leadership team. 30/

He seems to think he can simply hand down orders, urge his conference to fall in line and then punish them if they don't.
We'll see. 31/

If Cornyn, the #2 leader, didn't know, then either Mc Connell kept him in the dark or they were both blindsided. 32/

CORNYN on Lee/Moran defection: Had "no idea" it was coming.
I can't think of a single time in his entire career as leader that Reid was blindsided by so many members on such a high-priority issue. 33/

Further update: this is extremely harsh, especially from someone not known as a thorn in the side of leadership. 34/

To say you might not vote for so-and-so as leader during a campaign is common. To question your leader's ability in real time is not. 35/

tl;dr version: Where Reid at least listened to his party on what to do, whether right/wrong, McConnell is centering the Senate power to himself and the GOP Senate doesn't like that and they're barking back.

So even "just repeal" might not pass because McConnell is that much a dick.

 

[Morts]

Supporters think it's great 17 million people aren't forced to buy insurance against their will.

 

[Fenderputty]

It is such a shame that we have people actively trying to remove insurance coverage from so many. Obamacare is a very shitty instrument, leaves a lot to be desired and in any sane political space would be under the same consistent attack because it is shit and needs drastic improvement. -to get more people covered and lower costs.

That's the amazing part to me in all this. "Obamacare is a disaster" but all we can come up with is even bigger disasters laced with perceived freedom.

 

[TS-08]

Err, I'm not critiquing the CBO doing its legal job. I'm critiquing the feigned ignorance of "Boy howdy, we won't know until the CBO gets back to us". The stated objective of the ACA is to achieve full insurance coverage levels by spending money, and the stated objective of the AHCA is to stop spending that money and lower coverage levels to what they are before the ACA. The exact formulation is relatively secondary to this.

(Also, far from being valuable injections into the debate, I think the repeated re-scoring of a bunch of incrementally different bills just causes people to check out because "Wait, didn't I already hear this? Is this the bill that's dead or the other one? Is my news app broken?" Zooming out to the bigger picture is more likely to keep people engaged and focused on what's actually at stake.)

Who are these people though? I don't follow who you are actually criticizing. I also never said you were critiquing the job the CBO was doing.

And I disagree entirely with your "checked out" theory. These incremental scores keep the terrible bills in the spotlight even more, as people tend to forget things quickly. How many random people could tell you what the main points of the CBO score was for the initial senate repeal and replace bill, vs how many people could tell you what it is for the proposed repeal if you asked tomorrow? Anyone who "checks out" is no less checked out than they were before today's news.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Who are these people though?

I would say congressional Republicans who are trying to put lipstick on a pig, the breathless pundit class, beltway moderates, policy wonks, interest groups. The critique is that getting rope a doped by the specifics and having to give each little thing an honest and fair account is basically missing the forest for the trees, repeatedly.

 

[LegendofJoe]

Supporters think it's great 17 million people aren't forced to buy insurance against their will.

Even worse they're on gubermint insurance- Medicaid.

Nevermind the fact that it's likely that either themselves or someone in their own family rely on it to access health services.

 

[Widdle Puppy]

Damn that was quick....

How come?

 

[StopMakingSense]

Damn that was quick....

How come?

CBO already had a lot of the work done for straight repeal, the previous scores were compared against it.

 

[TS-08]

I would say congressional Republicans who are trying to put lipstick on a pig, the breathless pundit class, beltway moderates, policy wonks, interest groups. The critique is that getting rope a doped by the specifics and having to give each little thing an honest and fair account is basically missing the forest for the trees, repeatedly.

It feels like you are imagining a problem in order to rail against it. I guess I just don't find it problematic if people spend some time reporting what's in a government report that helps them make their case, as if they are falling into some kind of devious trap. But regardless, this isn't a particularly interesting discussion so I don't think I will press it further.

 

[TheLaughingStock]

I don't understand why it's such a struggle for the GOP to repeal and replace crap that Obama and the Dems cribbed from a small group of Republicans back in the 90s. They ran on getting rid of this for years so what's the problem?

If they can't find comfort in a solution that's better than what a few people came up with decades ago...then the GOP is in extremely bad shape.

 

[Kevin]

At least the Republicans are no longer hiding the fact that their healthcare will take finances from healthcare, killing millions of people in order to fuel tax cuts for the rich.

 

[titiklabingapat]

Hey CBO, that's a pretty nice funding you got there....

 

[BoogieWoogie]

I don't understand why it's such a struggle for the GOP to repeal and replace crap that Obama and the Dems cribbed from a small group of Republicans back in the 90s. They ran on getting rid of this for years so what's the problem?

If they can't find comfort in a solution that's better than what a few people came up with decades ago...then the GOP is in extremely bad shape.

Because their goal isn't to help people, it's to fuck Obama while simultaneously give the rich more money.

 

[thepotatoman]

According to Paul Ryan, the more uninsured the better because people don't want to be insured.

 

[I_D]

I find it ironic that a 'non-partisan' group is using the term "Obamacare."

On the plus side, since Obamacare isn't actually a real thing, I guess it can't hurt to repeal it.

 

[skullmuffins]

I find it ironic that a 'non-partisan' group is using the term "Obamacare."

On the plus side, since Obamacare isn't actually a real thing, I guess it can't hurt to repeal it.

The CBO calls it the ACA throughout. "Obamacare" only comes up where it's in the title of the bill they're scoring.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

It's weird that the revised CBO score stuff for the tweaked bills is something people care about at all.

It's obvious that no matter what tweaks you make, if you end the mandate, the medicaid expansion, and subsidies for the exchanges, the total number of uninsured will jump to the ballpark of the number of uninsured from before the PPACA. All of the Republican pitches have involved these three features, and surely any future pitch would also. Further, it's obvious that most of the money and most of the numbers are in the Medicaid expansion, not the mandate/subsidies. Twiddling a few billion here and a few billion there, offering little tweaks to the timing here and there, etc. don't materially change the stakes.

When they announce the next bill that does the exact same thing but adds a new clause that takes one cent from the National Endowment for the Arts and adds it to the Bomb Iran fund, we don't need to wait for CBO projections to find out that it will still cause 20-odd million uninsured and save a few hundred billion.

Trump supporters are dumb and unless it's explicitly stated they'll believe otherwise. You're trying to suggest using logic to a group that adamantly and proudly ignores it

 

[StoOgE]

Well, this will certainly not hurt the Republicans in any way whatsoever.

:cues Trump attacking the CBO:

 

[Muppet of a Man]

It is such a shame that we have people actively trying to remove insurance coverage from so many. Obamacare is a very shitty instrument, leaves a lot to be desired and in any sane political space would be under the same consistent attack because it is shit and needs drastic improvement. -to get more people covered and lower costs.

This is the most amazing thing about the shithole which is American politics: what we have now with the ACA is a barely serviceable "republican" system. And yet these conservative cunts have the gall to try to make it worse than before the ACA was even passed...worse than fucking nothing at all!

Fucking amazing...half the country are literally evil cunts, especially the politicians in question.

 

[titiklabingapat]

This probably won't pass. McConnell just burned way too many bridges. At least according to a former Senate staff member as explained on Twitter.



tl;dr version: Where Reid at least listened to his party on what to do, whether right/wrong, McConnell is centering the Senate power to himself and the GOP Senate doesn't like that and they're barking back.

So even "just repeal" might not pass because McConnell is that much a dick.

I believe it. There are rumours floating around that there were 8 to 10 other GOP senators that had 'reservations' on Monday about the BCRA not counting Collins and Paul. That's a good third of your caucus. It's essentially open rebellion.

 

[TheLaughingStock]

Because their goal isn't to help people, it's to fuck Obama while simultaneously give the rich more money.

But you can't do the latter two unless you're willing to help people.

Much of what makes Obamacare fundamentally flawed stems from bad ideas the Democrats attempted to crib from the GOP and rejigger as their own solutions. This helped lead to the GOP's dominance over the US government and gave them a great opportunity. It was a technical and a political mistake.

If the GOP addresses where the US falls short relative to other efforts around the world, then they could put more money in everyone's pocket (the rich in particular) and erase part of Obama's legacy.

 

[plagiarize]

If the GOP addresses where the US falls short relative to others efforts around the world, then they could put more money in everyone's pocket (the rich in particular) and erase part of Obama's legacy.

And if they funded a mission to Mars we could be there in less than ten years.

Spoiler

They have no interest in making healthcare better.

 

[rokkerkory]

What a mockery. The gop party truly cares about people.

 

[andycapps]

Would Trump really celebrate if 17 million people lost their healthcare in ONE YEAR?

Actually yes, because tax cuts.

 

[IrishNinja]

plus all the millions of new bankruptcies by people who get care but can't pay the bill.

as a victim of this, this doesn't get brought up nearly enough: "crossing state lines" means getting a cheap but worthless policy that does nothing in a serious accident.

and just like insurance pools & public hospitals, we all share the cost of these bankruptcies...but try explaining that to a free market advocate

 

[MadeULook]

Schumer: “The latest CBO score of the Senate Republican ‘repeal and run’ bill confirms…”

https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/887792167422488578



They are dedicating rest of the week, weekend and early next week for converting no's to yes's.

They can try but it's dead in the water with the CBO. I mean, it was already dead but this is just the overkill.

 

[Mr. Giggles]

I've seen three CBO scores for 3 repeal attempts, all of them terrible.

What's the worst one yet? Like purely from a numbers stand point.

Does anybody know? I'd look it up myself but browsing GAF and watching porn is the extent of my multitasking abilities unfortunately

 

[Tovarisc]

I've seen three CBO scores for 3 repeal attempts, all of them terrible.

What's the worst one yet? Like purely from a numbers stand point.

Does anybody know? I'd look it up myself but browsing GAF and watching porn is the extent of my multitasking abilities unfortunately

This is worst one yet.

House bill looks like sane version when put next to Senate ones.

 

[Mr. Giggles]

This is worst one yet.

House bill looks like sane version when put next to Senate ones.

Ouch.

 

[gdt]

17 million in 2018 holy fucking shit.

 

[Gallbaro]

17 million in 2018 holy fucking shit.

17 additional. It's more like 37(?) Million.