Obamacare repeal is dead... again.

Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell. The Hill. 

After failing to pass a replacement bill for Obamacare, it appears that the effort to repeal Obamacare is also dead. The Hill. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is planning on holding a vote on repealing the health care law sometime this week, but it appears he does not have the votes. There are 52 Senate Republicans so McConnell can afford to lose two, but already three senators, Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia) are very unlikely to vote for the repeal. Senator Rob Portman (Ohio) has also publicly questioned the wisdom of repealing Obamacare without a replacement. Passing the repeal bill would not end Obamacare, but it would defund the health care exchanges and subsidies. 

My Comment:

What an embarrassment for the Republican Party. This was a massive failure for our senators and it will be remembered for quite a long time. It is amazing to me that nobody was able to herd the cats in the Senate to get a replace bill passed. The failure will likely have consequences in the future. 

The problem is that the GOP coalition never agreed on what to do with health care. On the conservative end, Senators like Rand Paul wanted a total repeal and would accept nothing less. On the other end, Senators like Susan Collins wanted to keep Obamacare or even expand it. Between both of those factions there was the rest of the Senate who wanted a replacement bill. None of these factions could agree enough to get something passed. 

This failure comes after the lower house in Congress was able to pass a bill. That bill, while certainly not perfect, was a suitable replacement for Obamacare. Passing the House version of the bill would have kept the replace Obamacare promise that the Republicans have made since the passage of the bill with no Republican votes. 

Of course, if the repeal only bill passed it would be an absolute disaster for everyone. Though the bill has a two year grace period before it comes into effect, it would make a lot of people lose healthcare. The theory would be that doing so would force Democrats and reluctant Republicans to support a replacement bill, but the risk is that they would not go along with it and would allow Obamacare to expire. 

Doing so would cause massive damage to pretty much everyone in Washington. Republicans would be blamed for repealing the bill and Democrats would be blamed for not passing a replacement. Both actions would anger the hell out of anyone who likes Obamacare or cares about healthcare. Only a few radicals that want the complete repeal would be happy. 

I still think that tackling Health Care first was a massive mistake for the Republicans. Doing so was a lose lose proposition. First, if they passed the Obamacare replacement they would own, pretty much exclusively, any problems that inevitably happened . Second, if they failed, like it appears they have, they would have to face major anger from their base who voted for a repeal/replacement of Obamacare and have done so for the last four elections. 

There were so many other things that they could have passed first, many of which would have been simple fixes. The Republicans have essentially wasted the first seven months of the Trump presidency accomplishing nothing when they could have easily passed something like stronger protection for gun rights, funding and building the border wall or tax reform. Instead they have nothing to show for the last seven months. 

I fear that this could have consequences for the 2018 elections. Normally mid term elections are tough for the incumbent party, so the GOP already has an uphill battle. Completely failing to keep a major campaign promise is likely to make things worse. The Republican base is going to be disgusted with this failure and may stay home. It may even cause some representatives to get replaced in the primaries. 

Of course passing a repeal or replace of Obamacare would have had consequences as well. Not the least of which would be a reinvigorating of the Democrats base. Doing so would have massive consequences because right now the Democratic Party is a mess. They don't seem to stand for anything other than opposing President Trump, but if a repeal or replace bill was passed they would stand for health care yet again.

Still, there is a small chance that something will get done with Obamacare. There is a small chance that one of the reluctant senators would flip, but I am not holding my breath. Even more unlikely is a bipartisan compromise that would fix some of Obamacare's problems, which is technically possible but very unlikely to happen. Much more likely is that we will have to live with Obamacare as it is until the makeup of Congress changes.