Slate - "The Crazy House Conservatives Might Actually Be Right About Obamacare Repeal"
read it - the point is that the best for all is for this extreme bill to come up, die in the Senate - and we get to keep the ACA - very interesting read.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/03/23/are_the_crazy_house_conservatives_actually_right_about_obamacare_repeal.html
By Jordan Weissmann
So, here we are. It's Thursday evening, and House Republicans have had to cancel their vote to repeal and replace Obamacare because their bill still doesn't have enough support from hardline conservatives to pass. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, the face of the holdouts, says leadership needs to turn another “30 to 40” votes to reach the finish line. Trumpcare appears to be on life support.
What do the no's want? Meadows isn't getting into specifics, except to say that he doesn't think the current bill would lower premiums enough for his constituents. But the answer seems to be that conservatives are determined to kill off many of the insurance market regulations that make up the very heart of Obamacare. House leaders seem to be hesitent to do so, because many of those rules are quite popular, and nixing them would tee up some easy 30 second ads against Republicans in swing districts.
But, purely from a policy perspective, the hardliners may be on stronger footing. Sure, the changes they're seeking might not go over well outside their own ruby red districts. But their approach might be slightly less disastrous for the insurance market than the misbegotten, unloved compromise bill Paul Ryan and the White Houser are currently pushing.
Up until last night, the American Health Care Act was animated by a very specific legislative logic. Because Senate Republicans planned to pass their version of the bill using the budget reconciliation process in order to avoid a filibuster, the plan could only deal with spending issues, not regulations. So Congress could slash Obamacare's subsidies, eliminate its taxes, and cut Medicaid down to size, but it couldn't eighty-six rules barring insurers from discriminating against patinets with pre-existing conditions. That was the theory, anyway. In reality, many parts of the bill looked a whole lot like regulatory tweaks, such as a change that would have allowed insurers to charge older Americans up to five times what young adults pay for coverage. Why was that fair game, but not Obamacare's hundreds of other pages of regulatory dictates? Nobody would really say. This angered conservatives, who really, really want to tear out Obamacare root and branch, without worrying about obscure Senate parliamentary rules.
snip - much more to read - click the link above
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