The Obamacare replacement vote has been postponed. There are conflicting reports on when a vote will next take place.
House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy told CNN that House debate on the bill will start Friday morning. But a White House spokeswoman said debate will begin on Thursday night and Republicans expect to have the votes to pass it on Friday.
The postponement is a sobering setback for Republicans, who aimed to approve health-care legislation before moving to other parts of their agenda, particularly tax reform. The GOP had timed Thursday’s now-aborted vote to the seventh anniversary of the passage of the ACA, popularly known as Obamacare.
President met with the House Freedom Caucus for two straight days, aiming to convince the conservative group to vote to pass the plan. Members of the caucus have opposed the current replacement proposal, saying it does not go far enough to repeal Obamacare.
A Freedom Caucus source told CNBC there is “no way” a bill will pass on Friday.
The White House gave the House Freedom Caucus what one lawmaker called a “final offer” Thursday in its effort to win enough votes for the legislation. After the delay, Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows told reporters “We have not gotten enough of our members to get to ‘yes'” but added that “progress is being made.”
“I am still a ‘no’ at this time, I’m desperately trying to get to ‘yes’ … with all of the Freedom Caucus, they’re really trying to get to ‘yes,'” the North Carolina Republican said. He added that he expects the GOP needs “another 30 or 40 votes” to pass the bill.
Scheduling Change
The latest spin from the White House is the delay is nothing more than a scheduling change so reporters don’t have to meet at 3:00 Friday for the vote.
A scheduling change? Really? When you are 30 to 40 votes short? This was all too predictable.
The “vote will get crushed” item was up to the individual to decide, but 30 votes short would qualify in my estimation.
Only six readers opted for that result. And that makes sense.
In retrospect, It was really a choice between “The vote will barely pass” and “The vote won’t happen”.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
The cost of health care needs to decline by 50%. Not the subsidized price to people. The actual cost.
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No!
That means people need to make more effort to exercise, eat less, stop smoking, reduce drinking, stop doing drugs, and abstain from sex. The demand side of the equation is the problem.
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Joe,
To do that health care insurance needs to be outlawed, every consumer needs a published price list of medical services to shop. There’s no other (high cost) service that consumers don’t know the cost in advance. Consumers are forced to buy a huge pig in a poke.
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YEP ! With any kind of insurance – who cares what it costs? You probably don’t even look. Especially if the Doc is limited to either Medicare payments – or your group Policy payment limits. Sorry to admit, I am guilty of that.
However – IF I were spending my own money – out of My pocket – I’d care a LOT – and I’d shop around – and I’d get the best price from a good doctor….
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Shop around for MD’s? 50% of the MD’s graduated in the lower half of their classes!
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Nothing “needs” to be “outlawed.” Ever. Well, maybe premeditated murder. Maybe.
Just leave people alone. If someone wants to sell someone else insurance, go the heck ahead. And if noone wants to, then go the heck ahead with that too. Meddling in that is not a function of any legitimate government either way.
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governments mandare ins, states mandate auto ins, can’t get a mortgage without homeowners ins, can’t get a mort in many areas without gov mandated flood ins
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I’m sure neither can you in our Sister country, North Korea.
In that bygone place the founders called Land of the Free, you could, however.
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John, I’m not sure ‘Gov’t” is mandating all those. The market is. I do NOT have flood insurance. I do not have mortgage insurance. I OWN my house. When the BANK owns the majority of your house, THEY mandate homeowners (fire), flood, etc. to protect THEIR interest. I DO have homeowners (fire) because I want it. I do not have earthquake nor flood as neither are reasonable problems from where I live in North Texas. MY loss if it happens.
Gov’t mandates auto ins because you operate on the roads THEY built – and they want YOU to be responsible for any damage to their roads – or other public. Drive on your own land…..don’t have to even register – nor insure – your car.
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Too many “poor-old-me-I-also-want-some-free-stuff-from-the-government” people have been sucking on the free government teat for too long.
YES, we medical care need reform.
But what I REALLY need….. is for YOU to pay for MY health care.
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+100
The entire political establishment failed today — neither party offered a solution the country can afford to keep. Now we have to wait a couple weeks for Paul Ryan to leave “for personal reasons” or “to spend more time with his family” or some other rubbish to avoid admitting that he and Nancy Pelosi betrayed the country.
I originally thought Trump was letting Ryan fail, but I don’t know what Trump’s game is now. He still put his reputation on the line that obamacare will get repealed, and he will be labeled a failure if he allows it to stay.
Hopefully Congress will just pass the exact same bill they already passed last fall. Who cares if illegal immigrants lose “free” insurance paid for by middle class tax payers? When are middle class taxpayers, both dems and reps, going to get some priority from the losers in Washington?
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A new Quinnipiac University poll shows American voters are against the GOP plan by 56 – 17 percent. Americans wanted the employer mandates repealed that raised employer plan deductibles to the moon. Instead, the radical right is trying to turn the vote into a crusade against their elders. Voters hate it. They don’t want their elders to be abandoned. Originally Speaker Ryan even wanted to use the vote to turn Medicare into a fixed monthly amount that the elderly were supposed to buy private insurance with. Voters hated that idea, so he abandoned it. The GOP is doing everything except trying to lower employer deductibles.
Its the employer mandates that most American voters want changed. Not Medicaid, Medicare, or help for the 60 plus group with their premiums. Most voters like those.
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Let’s put everyone on equal footing and get rid of employer provided healthcare. Make it illegal to do so.
Then all you people who are lucky to maybe pay $0 to a few hundred $$/month towards your employer provided insurance will see what the REAL cost of health insurance is and how high they can run deductibles!
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Don’t need to make it illegal, just remove the tax advantages. Make the full value of employer provided insurance taxable as wage income, and remove the tax deduction for health insurance.
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If the system continue not to require the person getting the treatment to pay for the treatment, costs will continue to rise briskly. Why on earth do we get health insurance through our employers? We don’t car insurance there. Or life insurance. Or home insurance. Why health? It makes zero sense. . .because it came out of politics and the wage-price freeze of WWII.
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+100
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There is no competitive market for health care. You cannot get information as to what things cost, e.g., a heart surgery. Worse, there is collusion between insurance companies and employers, so that a insurance company has a rate for its customers, and private payers pay through the nose. Therefore, making people pay directly does no good.
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Many reforms are necessary to return medicine to a free market system AFTER REPEAL.
1. Break the American Medical Association monopoly by increasing the number of physicians.
2. Facilitate Skype medicine across borders and within USA.
3. Permit medical insurance across state lines.
4. Require up front price quotes for medical service as is the norm for professional legal services.
5. Allow Americans to import lower priced medicines from abroad.
6. Deport Mexicans who burden the hospital emergency rooms.
7. Tort reform !!!
8. Allow chemically identical substitutions and bio similar substitutions without medical trials
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Yes, that plus stop the bank from printing inflation. Medical inflation is out of control.
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In reply to your post item by item:
1) Where will more physicians come from? People cried that Affirmative Action created sub-standard doctors. Overseas? How good are the medical schools? Now we have to ask if they are Muslim. Most foreign trained physicians happen to be Muslim.
2) Skype medicine where some guy who says he is a doctor in India will diagnose an ailment, seriously? and then treat it?
3) Medical insurance is already allowed over state lines. And when you live in Florida and buy a policy in Nebraska governed by the laws of that state and have a dispute, good luck!
4) Medicine is not like law or accounting where you can provide a finite service at a set price. How do you price an organ transplant?
5) Who do you sue when the medicine from a doubtful foreign source, not quality tested as the FDA does, kills your spouse?
6) If you want to deport the Mexicans I imagine you would want to do the same to the Muslim doctors who treat them.
7) So when an ill trained doctor commits medical malpractice that puts you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life, tort reform will prevent you from getting enough through litigation to live on and get care for the next 30+ years. Why are doctors who commit serial malpractice allowed to continue to practice and be protected from those they kill and maim?
8) So you would volunteer to take an untested chemical substance to treat a serious illness? Don’t make me laugh.
Clearly you have no idea how medicine operates.
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So what’s the problem with passing a clean repeal? You did it 50 times. Oh, wait…now that it’s actually going to be SIGNED, you can’t get the votes? So you never meant it to begin with. You were just hiding behind the Senate and/or Obama’s veto pen. Now that the prospect of repeal is actual, suddenly you don’t have the votes? Fascinating study in integrity.
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+100
The simple truth you just explained is going to haunt the Paul Ryan fan club who wants someone (anyone) to believe his plan is the best they can do. Everyone already knows that isn’t true. The exact same group passed a simple repeal just a few months ago.
Ryan’s credibility is finished
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Mar. 23, 2017 at 7:38 PM
Trump Has No Good Options On Health Care
And it’s his own fault.
By Nate Silver
Sometimes in a poker hand, you find yourself with no good choices. You’ve invested a lot of money in the pot. But then your opponent unexpectedly makes a large bet and you have a marginal hand. Your options — folding, calling and reraising (as a bluff) — are all money-losing plays.1 But you have to pick one of them, and it’s a matter of finding the least-worst outcome. It’s the situation every poker player hates the most.
President Trump finds himself in a similar predicament on health care, now that GOP leaders have announced they’re delaying a vote on the House GOP’s bill to repeal and replace Obamacare and seemingly have no clear plan to secure the votes for passage. Trump has a series of bad options for how to proceed:
…
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-has-no-good-options-on-health-care/
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After all the crowing about the meaning of existing home sales dropping, no mention of the new homes sales up over 6%? lol?
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And BTW: I think we need to add dentalcare to any new health insurance law. Teeth and mouths are part of the body, no?
===========
With Age Comes a Mouthful of Trouble
Paula Span
THE NEW OLD AGE
MARCH 23, 2017
Alex Maddalena had gone five years without seeing a dentist.
He knew that he needed to. It hurt to chew. A couple of teeth had grown discolored, so he tried not to smile broadly. His daughter kept urging him to get a checkup.
The reason he didn’t: money.
Medicare has never provided dental care, except for certain medical conditions, and California’s Medicaid program covers only some services, at reimbursement rates so low that most of the state’s dentists do not accept Medicaid patients at all.
By the time Mr. Maddalena, 79, made an appointment at the new nonprofit Gary and Mary West Senior Dental Center in January, he had advanced periodontal disease, a couple of large cavities and three teeth that needed extraction.
“The destruction had advanced to the point that we couldn’t save them,” said Dr. Karen Becerra, the center’s dental director.
Many Americans find it difficult to obtain adequate dental care, but the problem is particularly acute among older Americans like Mr. Maddalena. Fewer than half of Medicare beneficiaries have visited a dentist in the past year, a rate that sinks to 26 to 28 percent at lower income levels.
….
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Stop eating sugar and drinking soft drink poison (citric acid, et al ) and you’ll never see another dentist again in your life
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Republicans have contrived to avoid repeal of Obamacare. If it self destructs the insurance companies will fail. Medicine will revert to a cash system. Personal responsibility will be restored. Medical cost deflation should abruptly follow.
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Yes, that’s what Lindsey Graham wants. The problem is when it gets here will he still want it?
I remain dubious about just how exactly that “personal responsibility” gets restored.
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I’m 100% for personal responsibility…not eating like a land wale and using caution when riding ATV’s with no helmet (or pants, ha!), etc. What I want to see is a reasonable option for catastrophic unforeseen act-of-god type medical…but that topic get’s all sorts of gray shades very quickly. To ponder.
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Trader Joe “nails it” again…
per my earlier comments on an earlier Mish post thingy
“Trump is playing 4 dimensional chess…and Ryan is playing with himself. Trump letting Ryan out there to fall flat on his face (payback for flip flopping on his support of The Trumpster during the election) — if you go back and listen to or read Trump’s campaign info, he wants a much broader coverage platform…lower costs…and all sorts of other good stuff. The plan as proposed isn’t even close. Next!”
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