Skinny Repeal Died in Senate Overnight: I Guess it had USELESS ObamaCare

by Scott Creighton

The senate met long into the night Thursday in hopes they could come to some basic agreement on the repeal and replacement of ObamaCare (should be called RomneyCare or Heritage Foundation Care to be honest)

After telling their constituents for the past 7 years that they would get rid of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as soon as they could, republican senators failed to do so, once again, early this morning.

Yesterday the straight repeal of ObamaCare submitted by Rand Paul failed in the senate to even reach a simple majority. It died by a vote of 45-55.

Late last night the proposal on the table was what they called the “skinny repeal” bill. It was only 8 pages and it laid out a number of changes to the massive ACA that republicans have been talking about for years.

• Repeal the unconstitutional individual mandate: this would set the penalty for not having insurance all year at $0 dollars, effectively repealing the mandate.
  
• Get rid of the employer mandate for eight years: businesses with more than 50 employees would no longer have to provide “affordable” coverage to their employees or face a major penalty.
• Provide greater flexibility to the states through waivers: some regulations including out of pocket spending limits and being forced to include certain coverages in ALL plans would be removed while states still “cannot waive the rules that ban insurers from rejecting consumers or charging them more because they have a pre-existing condition. “
• Defund Planned Parenthood and provide the funds to Community Health Centers:
• Eliminates the medical device tax for three years: this one has already been suspended in 2016 and 2017 and would simply be an extension of that.
• Increase contribution limit to Health Savings Accounts: wealthy people who use such things would be allowed to contribute more, making Big Finance happy.
• Eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund: “eliminate support for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Prevention and Public Health Fund. It provides the CDC with about $1 billion annually, or about 12% of the agency’s budget.”

The bill would NOT have:

• Touched Medicaid: at all
• Eliminated taxes on the wealthy and others:
• Changed the federal subsidies:

The unconstitutional mandate would be gone but the exchanges would remain. The plans would stay in place for people who were happy with their plan. Subsidies would stay making sure those who WANTED to keep their plan would still be able to afford them. Taxes on the wealthy would remain. People with pre-existing conditions could still get coverage and insurance companies couldn’t charge them more because of them.

Seems like that might have been a good first step in fixing ObamaCare…. you know, what the fake left in congress has been promising all this time.

And they voted as a block against this.

I guess that’s what the “defund planned parenthood” clause was about.

In the end it was John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski who stuck in the daggers from the right side of the plan.

John had reportedly been talking to Paul Ryan prior to casting his vote trying to make sure if he voted YES the bill would die anyway in the House. Ryan assured him it would but Johnny boy voted NO just the same. Just to be sure I guess.

McCain was handed a phone by Mitch McConnell right before his vote presumably to speak with the president. Phones aren’t allowed on the floor of the senate.

After the votes the senate took off for the weekend and John jetted off to the hospital for some more care since he enjoys a platinum insurance policy paid for by the voters.

My uncle is currently in the last stages of his battle with cancer but his insurance company isn’t sending him to the Mayo Clinic for state of the art, top of the line care like we are doing for McCain.

And my uncle has never once lied us into war, cut deals with known terrorists overseas or betrayed his fellow soldiers and then later said he was a “hero” for doing it.

Guess we got a priorities issue here in the states.

Twitter is attacking McCain mercilessly. God bless social media. I guess it’s God’s way of saying the MSM is FAKE NEWS.

So we had a chance to get out from under ObamaCare and we blew it. It will continue as is, ripping off young healthy people and keeping real healthcare out of reach for millions of Americans, just like certain folks want it. Certain folks like the unDemocratic Party’s senators in D.C. and John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski

Just watch those insurance stocks jump today.