Obamacare Replacement News

Well, there isn’t any.

Replacement is clearly a little more difficult than the Republican party thought it was going to be. In fact it is beginning to look a lot like being impossible. Whatever turns up, whenever it turns up, and however it is presented could be a monumental fudge.

Jason Linkins has a detailed history of how the Republicans have stuttered to where they now are. Which is basically where they were four years ago, if not more.

At this rate I think the GOP would be best advised to announce they have already replaced Obamacare with something called the Affordable Care Act and hope that no one notices that the two are the same thing. After all well over 50% of Republican voters apparently don’t know that the ACA is the proper title of Obamacare and, when asked, say that much prefer the former over the latter.

Slick marketing people have done this kind of thing for years. It’s called re-branding.

In any case all we hear or see from Republican leaders and various party experts is either total silence or a shuffling uncertainty leading nowhere. Apparently the latest efforts to get some sort of consensus has broken down and we are back to being told that they are working hard on developing a plan that will be announced soon. Or sometime. We also are being told that the replacement process is in disarray as people steadily learn that Obamacare represents the only solid way to accomplish its goal of making care more affordable and thus increasing coverage. Stepping away from any part of it means starting all over.

Even more awkward fro Republicans is that they are now realizing that fixing the parts of Obamacare they don’t like is relatively easy. They could do that quite quickly.

But they promised to get rid of it.

Oops.