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In today’s political atmosphere, conservatives and federalists must take victories when we can. It shouldn’t matter if those victories come through ignorance or error, but for whatever reason I’m stuck on President Trump’s opposition to Alexander-Murray, the proposed Obamacare bailout bill. I’m glad he opposes it, but I’m annoyed by his reasons for doing so. They’re wrong.
It’s hard to discern full intention from a Tweet, but if I’m reading the President’s 140-character statement on the proposed bill properly, I can only assume he doesn’t quite understand what’s being proposed.
I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins co's who have made a fortune w/ O'Care.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2017
There are two problems here. First, the bill wouldn’t bail out insurance companies. It bails out Obamacare’s low-income recipients. The money that President Obama illegally procured was to allow insurance companies to charge below-market prices for coverage by compensating them with the difference. They get their money with or without the bailout. It’s just a question of whether the low-income families pay the difference or the taxpayers.
The second confusing part of the Tweet is supporting insurance companies who have made a fortune off Obamacare. Granted, Obamacare has been what the insurance companies have wanted for decades, but they weren’t making the fortunes they expected. That’s why so many of them are pulling out. If they were making fortunes through Obamacare, they wouldn’t be running as quickly as they can away from the program.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that they’re not making money. Those who have survived are poised to make even more money as choices have been eliminated. The herd has been thinned so that those who remain have greater opportunity for profits. Still, the President seems to be missing the point.
We need a full repeal. We need this repeal to be implemented in appropriate stages; some pieces of Obamacare can be eliminated immediately while others can be weened off over time. We can get things to the best point we’ve ever been in the modern era’s healthcare world by fixing some of the problems that existed before Obamacare while eliminating the federal government as a whole from the health insurance industry. If the President understood this, we’d have a much better chance of seeing real change for the better. Instead. we have a Congress that doesn’t know how to move forward and a President who isn’t even aware of which direction he’s heading, let alone where he’s taking the nation.
Some “pragmatic” conservatives would say we need to help the low-income families so the GOP doesn’t lose majorities in 2018. First, I’m not one who’s too concerned about majorities since it’s clear there’s very little difference between the major parties. Second, by bailing it out, the GOP takes ownership. They need to declare that they won’t bail anybody out because the whole program has been a failure from the start. They need to do everything they can to remind everyone that Obamacare was failing before President Trump took office. They need to put ownership back where it belongs, in the hands of the Democrats, so they can force them to choose between repealing it or allowing it to collapse.
The good news is that this bailout is less likely to happen without the President’s support. The unfortunate aspect is that the President doesn’t know why he doesn’t support it and Republicans on Capitol Hill won’t admit why they do.
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