The House Just Passed a Bill to Rewrite Obamacare

[EasyAce]

House Republicans say their bill repeals the ACA. Instead, it leaves the essential structure of that law in place.
By Peter Suderman
http://reason.com/blog/2017/05/04/the-house-just-passed-a-bill-to-rewrite/print

Congress just took a major first step toward overhauling Obamacare. On a party-line vote of 217 to 213,
House Republicans passed the American Health Care Act (AHCA), crossing the threshold for passage by a single
vote . . .

The bill, which Republicans billed as a way of repealing and replacing Obamacare, leaves much of the core
structure of Obamacare intact, albeit in an altered form . . .

. . . Following passage in the House, the bill will go to the Senate, where it faces long odds in its current form.
Republican senators have criticized the bill, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) saying that the changes won by
the Freedom Caucus have merely made the bill "less bad." Other GOP Senators have promised to rewrite the bill.
If the Senate changes the bill and passes it, the House and the Senate would then have to renegotiate compromise
legislation, which could prove tricky, since the changes that garnered support from House conservatives would
likely turn off Senate moderates.

Some House Republicans have also suggested that they might

continue to press for changes to the bill, depending
on the results of any CBO score that is eventually released. It is unlikely, then, that this bill, in its current form,
will ever become law.

But it allows House Republicans to claim that they have voted to repeal and replace Obamacare. "A lot of us have
been waiting seven years to cast this vote," Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said in a floor speech today.
Ryan framed the vote as a fulfillment of the GOP's promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. "This bill delivers on
the promises that we have made to the American people," he said.

Instead, what House Republicans have really done today is vote to keep Obamacare's essential subsidy and regulations
scheme in place, but in a form that is arguably worse than Obamacare itself.

[bolobaby]

Reason: nails it.

But Team Trump would be celebrating if Trump simply crossed off "Affordable Care Act" from the top of Obamacare and just scribbled in "Trump's Yuge Repeal of Obamacare" and passed the same bill all over again.

They have no ability left to discern fiction from reality.