The Repeal Trap

THE MUDDLED REPEAL MESSAGE, CONT'D.... Yesterday afternoon, right-wing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) told thousands of fans, "You better believe it, baby. Repeal is what this girl is going to be all about after November. We're about repealing all of Obama-care."

Around the same time, right-wing Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said he thinks Republicans will gut the Affordable Care Act, but conceded, "We're not gonna repeal everything."

To reiterate a point from a couple of weeks ago, for all of Republicans' many faults, they tend to have one impressive strength: message discipline. The GOP Powers That Be will decide what party officials and their allies are supposed to say, and Republicans tend to follow the marching orders extremely well. The GOP shapes much of the discourse simply by getting its members to all say the exact same thing, over and over again.

When it comes to the next step on health care policy, the message mechanism obviously isn't working. It's starting to make the party a little nervous.

Quote:

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are facing a mini-rebellion against their message on healthcare reform.

Every GOP lawmaker rejected the Democrats' bill last month, but the party is now split on whether to call for a full repeal of the new law.

The "mini-rebellion" is the result of conservative Republicans getting an earful from their very conservative brethren. GOP leaders have committed to a "repeal and replace" message, though they won't say how much of the new law they want to repeal, and they won't say what they intend to replace it with.

For extremists like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), that's not good enough. He and his allies apparently intend to keep pressing party leaders to see things their way.

The Iowan wrote last week, "Republicans will either stand unanimously together for 100 percent repeal, as we did against the bill, or our ranks will be split and our effort defeated.... No one demonstrated to 'kill the most egregious aspects' or 'preserve the least egregious aspects' of Obamacare. This is an all or nothing fight from this point forward."

The back and forth within the GOP caucus may go on for a while.
"Steve Benen 10:45 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (27)

THEY JUST DON'T CARE ABOUT SUBSTANCE AND POLICY.... Whenever I write about my concerns that Republican lawmakers don't seem to know anything about public policy, I invariably get emails pushing back. Just because GOP leaders take a different approach, doesn't mean they're dumb, I'm told. They must know substantive details, I'm reminded. After all, they're experienced politicians responsible for shaping U.S. policy at the federal level.

I can appreciate why the premise seems implausible, but consider a classic example from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman.

This week, Bookman and other AJC editors and columnists participated in an 80-minute interview with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). Both agreed that they had serious objections to the Affordable Care Act, but said they intended to keep some provisions of the new law, including protections for those with pre-existing conditions. The individual mandate, however, would have to go, the conservative senators said.

Readers of this blog probably already recognize the problem here. If those with pre-existing conditions will be protected, the mandate is necessary to keep costs from spiraling and to prevent the "free rider" problem.

Bookman understands this. The senators don't.

If you somehow tell companies they can no longer deny coverage of pre-existing conditions, you need to provide them another way to eliminate free riders. Under the new law, individual mandates are that tool. As long as everyone is required to have coverage, nobody can game the system and there's no longer any justification to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

So if the GOP plan is going to ensure that pre-existing conditions are covered, as Chambliss and McConnell suggested, how would they do it without individual mandates? What mechanism would they use?

Chambliss and McConnell had no answer. Literally.

After Chambliss fumbled an initial response, McConnell broke in with a long and familiar condemnation of the Democratic plan, including its failure to include tort reform. After a few minutes, I interrupted and brought him back to the question: OK, but how are the Republicans going to cover pre-existing conditions?

"The premiums are going up either way," he said.

OK, I responded, a little stunned. That doesn't explain how the Republicans intend to cover pre-existing conditions.

"The premiums are going up either way," he repeated.

That was that. We moved on, and I still don't have my answer.

Let's be clear about this. After over a year of debate about health care policy, two leading Senate Republicans, including the Senate Minority Leader, can't speak intelligently about the basics. Bookman didn't throw a curve ball at them, quizzing them on some obscure provision -- this was an easy one for anyone with a basic understanding of what policymakers have been discussing since early last year.

They want protections for those with pre-existing conditions, and want to eliminate the mandate, but asked how that could work, these experienced senators have no idea how to even begin answering the question.

They have their talking points, but if anyone dares to scratch the surface, even a little, they're completely lost.

Anyone who thinks Republican lawmakers are well-informed, thoughtful public officials, with a working knowledge of public policy, simply isn't paying attention.
"Steve Benen 12:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (38)