Discussion: GOP Pollster: GOP Nominee Must Have An ACA Alternative In 2016

Discussion for article #234870

First - the GOP already has a replacement “plan”, duh: a patient-centered, free-market system which will insure millions more than Obamacare without job-killing regulations. Sign it into law, already!

B) - pollsters really need to break down the Obamacare unfavorable numbers into “Thinks it is too progressive/not ‘free-market’ enough” and “Wants single-payer”.

III - Since Obamacare is the conservative alternative (to S.P. or to Hillarycare), there will be no alternate plan from any of the GOP candidates. Not anything that withstands CBO-style analysis. See my first point for the entirety of their plan.

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“smart republicans” heh heh heh.

They got a problem, they can’t through out stuff people like, and the stuff people like they only got because Democrats.

They have two options for a replacement plan: Obamacare lite, which the baggers will savage and others will say why not the real thing; or a nonsense plan that wont make it through a news cycle.

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Ayers was confident that the eventual Republican presidential nominee will have a replacement for Obamacare" that will keep some aspects of Obamacare while ditching some unpopular aspects like the individual mandate.

“What you’re going to see is a well-crafted Republican alternative
that will take some of those aspects of Obamacare but will ameliorate
some of the more negative aspects of it, which have caused it still to
have more people who oppose it than support it. And the reason, I think is the mandate,” he said.

I know it’s too much to ask, but SOMEONE in the media should ask these sons of bitches how you keep the popular aspects of the ACA without the mandate!!! If the mandate is the one thing that is universally hated and it goes, what’s left? We didn’t have the mandate before and we also didn’t have health insurance.

sigh Most Americans can’t put two and two together…

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Yes, “Obamacare Lite”.

Obmacare replacement: Universal Health Care!

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the plan is to replace root and branch and not to replant.

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The task is ideologically impossible. Obamacare [essentially Romneycare, AKA Heritage Foundationcare] IS and always WAS the conservative alternative. There is no alternative that will pass muster either economically or in terms of effectiveness.

Look for lots of bullshit being emitted from the exhaust pipe of the Republican Klown-kar: bogus assumptions and “givens” akin to “tax cuts pay for themselves”, the testimony of political operative “experts” who know nothing about public health, anecdotal and made up data, and “white-papers”, all designed to show the gullible and corrupt corporate media that they are being Very Serious People in spite of the fact that their entire alternative-to-Obamacare “manifesto” is nothing more than a facade; like the false fronts employed to create an air of “dignity” on an otherwise dessicated and decaying town in the old West.

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They should ask the Heritage Foundation to come up with an alternative to the Heritage Foundation’s own plan.

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One problem is that Republicans have already painted themselves into a corner. For years, they spouted how there was no problem with health care in the US, that all one needed to do was use chickens as barter and go to the emergency room if they had an issue. Add to that how we should have the Constitutional FREEDOM to not have health insurance and that the change in health care is a government controlled handout and job killing. Now, how can they pivot from this stance by introducing a replacement? How can they come up with an alternative without admitting there is a problem.That is the quandry.

I’m sure with careful marketing and the always ready-to-assist FOX News, they can thread the needle. But it’s going to be difficult because it will be an acknowledgement that a change needs to be made and it will be improving on Obama’s signature accomplishment.

Or they can not do shit (like they’ve always done) and hope we get a terrorist or disease scare and blame Obama. That seems to always work.

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“What you’re going to see is a well-crafted Republican alternative that
will take some of those aspects of Obamacare but will ameliorate some of
the more negative aspects of it, which have caused it still to have
more people who oppose it than support it. And the reason, I think, is
the mandate,” he said.
In other words, The repubs have nothing.

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The good news for Republicans is that Obamacare remains unpopular overall…

Except when you poll the individual things the law does. In which case everything is popular, even among Republicans. The only thing people hate is the label and the associated “political identification baggage” with the label.

Not what the law is or actually does.

will keep some aspects of Obamacare while ditching some unpopular aspects like the individual mandate.

LOL. Good luck making the economics of it work without it. It is also funny given the mandate was a conservative/Republican idea from the get-go. Going back to 1989 and the Heritage Foundation white paper and co-authored by Stuart Butler and Edmund Haislmaier, which first put it forward. That was what became the foundation of the Dole/GOP alternative to “Hillarycare” in the early 90s and later morphed into “Romneycare”.

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And, HC replies to the hapless GOP nominee, “Single Payer!”

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wish I could believe the part about the news cycle. The media has already proved to me they couldn’t cut through the BS of GOP criticisms of the ACA. No matter how slight or ridiculous the GOP plan is, it will be presented as a serious alternative with very little exploration and the public will be even less informed than what little the media offers.

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Exactly, and don’t depend on the media pointing that out or the public understanding it.

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I wish

Yes, because false equivalence.

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You left out “chock full of poison pills, giveaways, smoke, mirrors, and butt covering.” . . . . and Hillary will veto it.

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He is being disingenuous. The “negative” aspects is it was passed under a Democratic administration and received the name “Obamacare”. They are quite aware what happens if the individual mandate is removed, that’s why it was the first thing they went after in the Courts.

Its a plan from a republican think tank, with around 100 republican amendments. The ONLY thing they don’t like about it is Obama passed it. And I guarantee if you SCOTUS does gut it, any plan put forward is going to look pretty much exactly like it, only with a different name.

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I can hear Chuck Todd now speaking to a Democrat on MTP after a GOPer talks vaguely about tax cuts for health care as if that is a good alternative: “But aren’t tax cuts better than no tax cuts?”