By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--January 3, 2017
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With Republican (sic) vowing to begin repealing Obamacare almost immediately when the 115th Congress convenes next week, Democratic lawmakers are immersed in strategy sessions on how to protect the nearly seven-year-old health care law. Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has promised to stand firm against repeal efforts and subsequently, Republican efforts to replace the Affordable Care Act with a more conservative framework. And a conference call convened by House Democrats earlier this week focused largely on emphasizing the benefits of Obamacare, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) noting that she sees parallels between the current situation and the 2005 effort by then-President George W. Bush to privatize Social Security, according to an aide on the call. “The Affordable Care Act has been successful in meeting its goals of reducing cost, increasing access and improving quality of care,” Pelosi wrote to members in a “Dear Colleague” letter this week. Democrats are also launching a broader health care offensive against Republicans that focuses not only on their push to repeal Obamacare but any prospective efforts from the GOP to overhaul Medicare and Medicaid. To that end, Democrats, led by Schumer, Pelosi and liberal firebrand Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — will host a so-called “day of action” on Jan. 15 that is meant to rev up grass roots support for shielding social safety net programs.
“Beginning in January, it is likely that Republican leaders in Congress will follow through on their threats to ram through a budget bill that will severely undermine the health care needs of the American people,” the three lawmakers wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter circulated earlier this week.This is probably going to end up taking the form of a massive propaganda campaign. The Worst Web Site in the World described the effort as "save health care," which is the perfect encapsulation of how Democrats see absolutely everything. If there's something good, and the government doesn't provide it to you, it doesn't exist and no one can have it. I could have sworn there was health care before ObamaCare passed, but don't tell that to a Democrat. Before their beneficience was bestowed upon the great unawashed, doctors and nurses hadn't even been invented. So you'll hear all kinds of stories about people who never had health insurance before ObamaCare, and how the insurance saved their lives or something, and how they'll now die if ObamaCare is repealed. It's not as if these people couldn't have accessed health care in any other way, and that's the whole point of repeal-and-replace. Most people agree that the pre-ObamaCare system wasn't great, but ObamaCare doubled down on the worst elements of it and made things far worse than they were. The solution is not to go back to what we had. It's to actually fix it right this time. I seriously doubt they're going to find three Republicans who favor keeping ObamaCare in place in total. But if they can make at least three nervous about repealing the "most popular" elements, they could seriously gum up the works and make repeal-and-replace a lot more procedurally difficult. I think it's a foregone conclusion that ObamaCare will be replaced, but I wish I could be more confident that it will be replaced with something good. I guess going from crap to crap-lite would be a victory for Democrats - the type they'll be pursuing a lot in the next several years.
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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
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