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ObamaCare repeal/replace (phase 1 of 3) clears House committees, heads for floor vote



Democrats offered a slew of amendments, all of them rightly rejected. If you already think the American Health Care Act is ObamaCare Lite or ObamaCare 2.0, the last thing you want to do is let the Democrats make it even more so. (Then again, if it really was just as bad as ObamaCare, why wouldn't Democrats be happy to see it pass as is?) Congressman Joe Barton offered, but then withdrew, an amendment that would have sped up the reversal of ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion. That doesn't mean it couldn't be proposed in a Senate version - although that seems unlikely - or in the future Phase 3 that can't be passed by a simple majority via reconciliation. It means Republicans don't think they can get 50 votes for this phase if the include it, and with Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Cory Gardner holding down the GOP's left flank, they may be right.
So here's where we stand:
The measure now goes to the House Budget Committee, with plans for a vote in the full House within several weeks. The House Ways and Means Committee passed its piece of the legislation early Thursday morning. While the plan is on track to make it to the floor by the end of the month, it faces an uphill battle in the Senate. Several Republicans have come out against the bill, including some senators from expansion states who oppose the Medicaid rollback. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said the bill is "worse" than ObamaCare. "Insurance rates could go up and Americans could have even less control," he told ABC News Thursday. Asked about the criticism from Cotton that the House is moving too fast, Scalise said at a press conference after the markup that Americans can't wait. "American families have waited long enough for relief from ObamaCare," he said. "We have run for years on the promise that if we had this opportunity, we would actually move forward to repeal and replace ObamaCare."

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I lean toward Cotton's thinking on the do-it-fast/take-your-time-and-do-it-right question, but where Scalise has a point is that the calendar gets more difficult to pass anything as the year goes on - and pressure groups have more time to bear down on the Collinses and Murkowskis of the world. Then again, if you're going to do it in three phases, you're going to confront the calendar issues at some point anyway. It's not as if the bill does nothing to roll back the Medicaid expansion. Barton's amendment would have started the rollback in 2020, whereas the bill in its current form starts it in 2023. So you're looking at six years down the road instead of three. Neither is right away, but the current approach gives recipients (and states) more time to make alternate arrangements. Then again, it also gives skittish politicians more time to get cold feet about it and push back the rollback or cancel it altogether. Nothing is ever really forever in politics, although it seems like social programs and federal agencies are born with eternal life.

Barton may yet re-introduce his amendment when the bill comes to the House floor, which should be in the next few weeks. And despite Mitch McConnell's insistence that the House bill will go straight to the Senate floor for a vote, there may be some conservative senators who insist on changes before they're willing to sign off. The problem, of course, is that there are only certain changes you can make and still have the bill eligible for a reconciliation vote that can't be filibustered. Hopefully serious conservatives and showboating libertarians keep that in mind. Regardless of what you think of the replacement at this phase, one thing is clear: This phase would repeal ObamaCare. It's true this means Republicans will own what comes next, which could be politically perilous and might not be as good as we are hoping for. Those are all serious issues, and I don't agree that we should just support anything that's sponsored by people with an (R) after their names. But it's also true legislative hurdles don't really permit you to just do everything you want all at once here, nor does the reality of the world ObamaCare has given us. Conservatives who demand we repeal and don't replace, but any bill at all in their minds means big government health care, are not living in the world of today. The federal government gave us ObamaCare and all its horrors. The federal government can't just say never mind and walk away. It has to fix the mess, and it has to take further actions to steer health care back toward a real free market. I'll be the first to say that phase 1 doesn't do the latter. I hope they don't think their work is done when this is passed.


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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