The Republicans’ trillion-dollar Obamacare repeal scam

Rss@dailykos.com (jon Perr) · Sunday, January 08, 2017, 3:55 pm

On March 23, 2010—the very day President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law—then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced his party's objective would be to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. But now, almost seven years later, McConnell and congressional Republicans are finding it extremely hard to do either. And soon the task for Majority Leader McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan and President-elect Donald Trump will get about a trillion dollars harder.

Developments over just past few weeks show why. For starters, a complete repeal of Obamacare now would leave an estimated 23 million more Americans without health insurance. Delaying it by up to four years past the 2020 election—as some Republicans are now contemplating—would be even worse, with a staggering 30 million people losing coverage as the individual market would enter a real "death spiral." With the repeal of the ACA's consumer protections like the ban on insurers' refusing to issue policies to those with pre-existing conditions, roughly 52 million Americans (27 percent of those under age 65) could find themselves at risk.

As a result, millions currently insured under Obamacare would face the prospect of postponed care and possible financial ruin. The GOP's body count would be a gruesome one, too: thousands of those left uninsured would needlessly die each year. It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump's own supporters, a group that will be disproportionately hit by the Obamacare repeal, are increasingly worried that the 45th president will effectively become a one-man death panel. And it's no wonder that organizations of doctors, hospitals and insurers have issued warnings about euthanizing the ACA without a replacement plan in place.

But Republicans don't have an Obamacare replacement plan. Even as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY) introduced a resolution Wednesday calling the elimination of the ACA's spending and revenue-raising provisions, Speaker Ryan could only promise the GOP would not "pull the rug out from anybody" so that "so that no one is left out in the cold, so that no one is worse off."

Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway was more specific about the GOP's nonexistent plan, pledging "we don't want anyone who currently has insurance not to have insurance." But those guarantees will cost money. And as it turns out, the Republicans have already promised the $1 trillion in savings from canceled Obamacare outlays for something and someone else: a massive, tax-cut windfall for the wealthy.

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