Corker is looking at a primary challenge, so this could be interesting…
Apparently Corker reads polls. One of the big bites the Republicans are proposing immediately has to do with medicaid. A lot of Red states are going to be hit hard if medicaid money is cut back. Hell nursing homes might put a lot of middle class grandmas out on the street if medicaid funding is cut.
What about McCain and Rubio? They’re both safe from retribution and are Senators from states that have a lot of retirees-
There’s not much doubt in my mind that the Senators who are “expressing doubts” are ones who’ve been contacted by the heads of hospitals in their areas as well as the health insurance lobby not to mention Big Pharma. These Red state Senators could give a sh*t about their residents but they do respond to pressure from forces that can provide funding and support for their causes.
Either that or throw away $350 BILLION of taxpayer money…keep trying Bob.
Obamacare is not that easily unraveled, without creating serious problems all over the place…none of those problems has a good optic associated with it, not even for the GOP spin doctors. Hospitals closing, Insurance companies launching massive layoffs…and oh yeah, lots of people dying. All very bad. Now cast that against big tax cuts for the rich and trying to fund Trump’s wall building project. And of course, less they forget, once the public starts turning against them (which is already happening on this repeal concept), their President is going to toss them all under the bus.
@ronbeyers–I sincerely hope that no middle class grandmas (or anyone else) is put on the street if medicaid funding is cut, but if they are, it needs to be story #1 in every US news outlet (except for Fox and Brietbart, of course–there the lead story will be about Donald’s fabulousness).
It’s always been reasonably clear that Trump wasn’t going to get anything done conventionally, with the usual tools of presidential persuasion and pressure on Congressional Rs. That probably would have been true even if the Rs had nominated a conventional politician who had won the presidency. But Trump isn’t even in the same ballpark as much of the Congressional party.
Trump is going to have to find radical, revolutionary, means of getting his own party to bend to his will, or settle for doing nothing. We’ve let the presidency acquire the necessary tools over recent decades, never imagining that the conventional political process would let anyone but a conventional politician gain the office. A conventional politician would never use these tools to bend Congress to his will, so we thought it was safe to put them in the president’s toolbox.
We may be very soon facing a demonstration of just how foolish it was to imagine that the office would always only be held by boring, no-drama, conventional politicians. It’s also quite possible, and probably more likely, that Trump won’t use these tools because he isn’t really interested in getting any particular public policy done. That actually seems likely, that he doesn’t really care deeply enough about public policy to want to go to all the trouble to set up the dictatorship he has the tools to accomplish. The real risk that things will go that way, to dictatorship, is that, while he doesn’t care about public policy, he won’t be able to abide being the failure that not accomplishing anything would make him. He may end up seizing dictatorial power for its own sake, because that seizing of power is going to be the only thing he can accomplish.
I’m really surprised that the Republicans are taking on Obamacare before passing big tax cuts and deporting some immigrants. It just seems dumb politically given their actual concern (tax cuts for the wealthy) and what will most clearly appeal to their base (seeing some destitute Mexican family being handcuffed and taken away somewhere).
Their families will have to house them if they become indigent. Hopefully the burden will fall most heavily on tRump voters.
You do realize that medicaid is the primary funding source for most long term care nursing facilities in this country don’t you. If Congress screws with medicaid funding too much nursing homes will be impacted.
@ronbyers–Actually, I did not know that, so thank you for that information. That fact makes this even more scary.
Don’t believe a word these Senators are saying. They always fall in line.
Looks to me like the repeal and delay strategy is crumbling. The number of R’s expressing discomfort with the gambit is growing, and statements from anonymous Congress folk suggest that this anxiety is more widespread than what is apparent. What is undoubtably true is that wading into the thicket of health care policy is about the last thing R’s wanted to start their governance with.
Loser! Sad! (etc, etc).
Something over 60% of all long term nursing home care is paid by Medicaid. At $5000 or more per month it doesn’t take most people long to deplete their life savings. After that Medicaid takes over. People think Medicaid is a program for poor black and brown people too lazy to work. Really it is a program aimed primarily at the health needs of poor children and the long term care of the elderly.
OK, so, what do you do if the big lie works when no one was expecting it to?
They danced on Obamacare’s imaginary grave for so long, now the time comes to actually bury it and they realize their voters, fooled as they might be over Trump, aren’t going to forget who took their benefits away.
This Republican political kabuki is starting to look like a Zydeco dance…
@ronbyers–Thanks for the additional information. Neither my parents nor grandparents needed nursing home care late in their lives, so I am uninformed about all of this. I can see this is a mightily important thing, though–Even the Republicans have to be concerned about the political optics of this.
Just how many families have MULTIPLE members on benefits, too, if both parents are in nursing homes, and both their benefits disappear or diminish drastically, some hard working Trump voters who couldn’t imagine THEY might lose anything, find out they will be caring for their folks at home from now on.
Think I’m joshin?