#19 - Groundhog Day and the Republican Response to Obamacare [How I Moved From Leaning Right to Leaning Left, Part 4]

The opening scene in the Bill Murray classic, "Groundhog Day", begins when the time on the clock radio flips to 6:00 am and the radio alarm kicks off the day with the memorable Sonny and Cher tune, "I've Got You, Babe",

but the tune immediately cuts in to the lyrics at the end of the song:
                              Then put your little hand in mine                             

                              There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb                             

                              Babe, I got you babe, I got you babe

Nooooo, I don't think this was the exact sentiment House Republicans were shooting for on Groundhog Day, February 2, 2016.    This was the day they were voting to override President Barack Obama's veto of their repeal of the Affordable Care Act, but on this Groundhog Day, there was no bi-partisan feel, no putting hands in hands, no climbing mountains together.  No, instead this scene was reminiscent of the movie, for in the House, this scene had played itself out over and over and over and over again, over 60 times, since 2011, with the same result.  There would be no repeal.

In typical Hollywood "Boy meets Girl, Boy Gets Girl" fashion, Bill Murray finds true love at the end of the movie and with that, he is able to, magically, break out of his repetitive nightmare, and he gets the girl, Andie McDowell, and goes on to live happily ever after.

Well, it now appears that the House Republicans think that they too will magically be breaking out of their repeating nightmare soon, as they have recently found true love as well.  They found it, in Donald Trump.

I know Bill Murray has a smile on his face.  I am less certain about the House Republicans.

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Make no mistake about it.  I believe the Democrats own Obamacare.

They rammed it through Congress without the support of any of the Republicans, although it's not clear to me if the Republicans would have voted for any bill, as they were so intent on not doing anything which could be viewed as a political victory for Barack Obama. Still the design of the program belonged to the Democrats.  It was their design, their implementation, their economics, so by any definition, it was their baby. And if memory serves me right, the bill was so big and the details came in so late, that hardly anyone on the Democratic side got to read the thing at the time of the vote.  But still, they voted.

I would like all Americans to have access to reasonably priced health insurance, but sorry, this is no the way to run a country. 

ObamaCare was not intended to create insurance. Instead it attempted to regulate private insurance to insure that individuals got more rights and protections, and help employees get access to high-quality, affordable health insurance.  Pieces of it were based on a predecessor program in Massachusetts (Romney Care) which seemed to be working, before it was superseded by the Federal law.  It was not a single payer system (i.e the government) and allowed for competition in health industry.  It attempted to create a fair alternative to those who could not afford individual insurance plans, but as always, the devil would be in the details, and the details revealed a lot of problems, including:

• Costs to the government are growing more than predicated
• Individual premiums are growing too fast
• There are noted difficulties for small businesses.  Any employer with more than 50 employees is required to offer insurance to their employees, so this requirement has led some employers to choose not to grow and others to downsize, in order to avoid the law entirely.  This does not help our capitalistic system.
• Insurance providers are dropping out of the program as they don't see the losses of their early years reversing themselves, decreasing competition and reducing options for individuals
• The complexity of the compliance reporting for companies is ....huge.  I have lived this one personally, so I can attest to it.  I think the purpose may be to insure employers offer quality plans to all employees fairly, but they went too far.   Perfect is the enemy of the good, and in their quest for perfection, they had gone too far.

And so ObamaCare either (i) needs to be fixed or (ii) it needs to be repealed and replaced.  I don't care how Republicans do it, as long as they do something.   If it makes Republican supporters happy to say they repealed Obamacare, great. 

So, Republicans finally have what they wished for - they own the House, the Senate, the Executive Branch and they can now do whatever they want to do.  I hope now that they have found true love, and that we will all magically be removed from this repetitive nightmare and we will live happily ever after. 

You can debate the language, the positioning or the approach.  At this point I care less, but I will observe that for several years Obama has said he was willing to discuss changes with the Republicans, and for several years all they did was vote to repeal it.  Instead of proactively engaging and trying to do something, they wasted time and they just held more meaningless votes with the same result.  And in the process, I began leaning more to the Left.

I will readily agree that the Democratic solution is flawed, but at least they tried to do something, at least they tried to help people.  Let's hope Republicans are similarly motivated.

I want the Republicans to succeed, I really do.  This long national nightmare must end and we must move on.  I hope their solution does a better job of insuring those Americans who can least afford to obtain insurance on their own.  If they can come up with an approach which makes health care better, less expensive, and simpler, it will be a win for all Americans and I will applaud their efforts.

But if they don’t, it will be their failure.  Make no mistake about that either.

[Note:  late yesterday, Republicans released their first pass at an attempt to repeal and replace Obamcare (the American Health Care Act, soon to be ...TrumpCare) . I applaud the effort to replace at the same time they are repealing, but the early view of their replacement has not yet been graded by the Congressional Budget Office, so we have no way of what the costs will be, nor how many individuals may ultimately opt for insurance with such a program. As always, the devil is in the details]