Obamacare on chopping block in 1st 100 days
But Trump tells president he would consider leaving certain 'helpful provisions'
Bob Unruh
Obamacare was created by Democrats who admitted deceiving the American public before they rammed the legislation through Congress without the support of a single Republican.
Now, according to a congressman who will be in a Republican-led House working with a Republican-led Senate and White House, the Democrats may not even be allowed input when Congress moves to repeal Obamacare.
Or at least kills components of the law that are most objectionable to Americans: the employer mandate, the individual mandate and the 30-hour work week requirement.
The London Daily Mail reports Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., said there will be a fast-track process during Trump’s first 100 days to repeal Obamacare and it will “make minority Democrats powerless to stop it.”
The House already has voted dozens of times for repeal, but there has been Democratic opposition in the Senate, where measures can be filibustered if they don’t garner a 60-vote supermajority, and the veto pen of Barack Obama, who regards the health-care law as his signature legislation.
But Collins noted the Republicans can use a budget procedure called “reconciliation” that can’t be stopped by a filibuster.
“Repealing Obamacare I believe can be done in the first 100 days. You can repeal sections of it using reconciliation. I don’t think the Democrats are going to allow us if you will … just repeal it, they would filibuster that,” he said.
He said a transition period will be needed to implement the changes.
The Daily Mail said Collins spoke after Trump met with House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
The two leaders would be the key players in deciding what procedures are used to repeal Obamacare.
The replacement for such a plan also would need to be worked out, since the original Obamacare revamped not only an entire industry that is a significant part of America’s annual budget, but made changes in health insurance for just about everyone in America.
“Pulling the rug” isn’t going to work out, Collins said.
“The replacing piece, we have replacement ideas. We’re going to have to make sure we run that through the administration. That’s going to take longer. Let’s face it, it’ll be a transition. You don’t cut it off on a Tuesday and on Wednesday say here’s the new plan,” he told the Mail.
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported Trump, who had been asked by Obama during a meeting this week not to repeal the law, said he would consider leaving certain popular provisions in place, such as the pre-existing conditions provision and keeping children on their parents’ plans until age 26.
On Fox News Channel’s “The Kelly File,” the man regarded as the architect of Obamacare, Ezekiel Emanuel, admitted that what Republicans have in mind can be done.
He conceded the Affordable Health Care Act, which was imposed on America through the “reconciliation” strategy, could be removed the same way.
But he affirmed it might even be easier than that.
Republicans just need to kill the subsidies, he said.
“If you don’t have subsidies, the exchange doesn’t work. You can’t pay for Medicaid in the states. They can wreak havoc without repealing it,” he said.
Then the insurance companies, which already are withdrawing from the program, would further pull out.
“Doesn’t take a lot to wreck,” he admitted.
He said the main issue that Republicans would have to address would be the consequences to 20 million people Obama reported were added to health-insurance rolls if Obamacare is gutted.
But Republicans, including Collins, said plans were in the works, although they haven’t been released.
Obamacare was contentious from its beginning, when only Democrats voted to support it. It’s been to the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times already, and justices there literally reconfigured federal law to accommodate it.
For one, they ruled that the Constitution allows the federal government to order, on pain of fines and penalties, consumers to purchase a government-designated consumer product.
The Obama administration also has tried to force religious believers, including Catholic nuns, to violate their faith by providing or paying for abortion services to employees.
There still are court battles developing over its requirements.
WND reported in 2015 that MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, who was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government to “consult” on Obamacare, admitted the entire effort was based on lies.
He also admitted that the program was written specifically “in a tortured way” to pass muster with “stupid” American voters.
Shortly after his comments, he was fired from the Massachusetts Obamacare board, and the auditor in Vermont found he may have “padded his bills to the state.”
Then Judicial Watch, the Washington watchdog, announced a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services for records concerning contracts and consultancy agreements with Gruber.
The organization is targeting a 2009 deal with Gruber in which he was the only person considered for the work and was paid nearly $400,000.
A video surfaced on the American Commitment website showing Gruber talking about how hiding information from the American public is a huge political advantage.
Obamacare, he said, “was written in a tortured way to make sure that CBO (the Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes.”
“If CBO scores the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK. So it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law that made it explicit that the healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed,” he said.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass,” said Gruber.
