So what’s the REAL truth with the Obamacare repeal?  If you listen to the media, the Republicans are in a total state of disarray and completely ununified as to what the Obamacare replacement plan should look like.  I mean, they are ALL unified on the repeal piece…albeit, not with respect to timing, vis-a-vis replacement.  And when the Dems are in power and in the same predicament, they simply chalk-up the perceived chaos as the typical “sausage-making” of the legislative process. No such reciprocation here, as far as media narrative.  I must confess, though, at the moment, I’m clinging to that sentiment like a life-preserver, floating alone in the middle of the ocean.  Despite this being a “Pro-Republican blog, I am 1) NOT an apologist for the GOP, and 2) Fully aware that there are quite a few self-serving buffoons in Congress with an “R” next to their name…and don’t know the meaning of the word “compromise.”  Could these Republicans ACTUALLY fail in this endeavor?  They sure could…but I am refusing to believe the man who wrote “The Art of the Deal” will allow that to happen.

So, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) explains all of this as a necessary three-phase process.  Straight from The Speaker’s website…Phase 1: The American Health Care Act, which takes full advantage of the budget reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster; Phase 2: Administration actions, notably by HHS Secretary Price, to stabilize the health insurance market, increase choices, and lower costs; Phase 3: Additional legislative policies, such as allowing individuals to purchase coverage across state lines, that by Senate rules cannot be included in a reconciliation bill.  Critical to the analysis is the fact that some of the more important attributes of the replacement plan…selling insurance across state lines, tort reform, etc…are in Phase 3 of this process.  Well, this is just giving everyone that queasy feeling of “the check’s in the mail.”  Here’s an important nuance that’s not REALLY a nuance…Obama had 60 votes in the Senate back when they passed Obamacare…the proverbial blank check.  And it STILL took about 15 months for him to sign the final bill…after a lot of arm twisting, bribes, and God knows what else.  Not a single Republican vote, and didn’t need it. Today, the GOP has only 52 votes in the Senate, and will somehow have to wrangle 8 Democratic votes to attain the more coveted provisions sought in the “Phase 3” legislation.  This will be about as easy as getting some liberal snowflake to wear a Mexican sombrero to a Halloween party.

In fact, this was NEVER going to be quick or easy…despite the pie-in-the sky campaign rhetoric to the contrary.  The monstrosity that is Obamacare…all thousands of pages…is more complex than trying to make sense of any of the gibberish that is spewed from Nancy Pelosi’s Botox-ridden yap.  So yesterday, the long-awaited report from the Congressional Budget Office came in on this Phase 1 piece of legislation, and here’s the upshot…according to the CBO, an additional 24 million people would be uninsured by 2026 under the new law, but it would reduce the federal deficit by $337 billion over the next decade.  And here’s the no BS perspective from which to look at this…1)  The CBO report only scores Phase 1 of this deal…that which is budget related and can be done under reconciliation, requiring just 51 Senate votes to pass.  It is in the next two phases where you have all of the great provisions that will juice the system in terms of creating competition and lowering cost; 2)  The additional 24 million people projected to “lose” insurance over the next decade are largely folks who will CHOOSE not to have insurance since the gov’t will no longer FORCE it down their throats.  The Dems and media will hammer the GOP over this, but predictably, will not couch it in the aforementioned perspective.  As Speaker Ryan stated, “Of course they’re going to say if we stop forcing people to buy something they don’t want to buy they’re not going to buy it.  That’s why you have these uninsured numbers, which we all expected.”  And let’s not forget…the CBO is almost always wrong, and often WAY, WAY off.  Case in point…Obamacare…In 2013, they said in 2016 there would be ~24 million people insured under Obamacare…but there were only ~10 million.   What about the CBO cost estimates?  Well…while varied, most independent analysis says the CBO UNDERSTATED the cost of Obamacare by hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years. Heck, Trump could fertilize all of his golf courses for 10 years with the crap the CBO puts out.

So yeah…CBO scoring is a necessary evil, but take the report with a huge grain of salt.  Again, it’s not only the inherent inaccuracy of these forecasts, but we’re only looking at a third of the “repeal and replacement” pie. It’s like being a third of the way through a long night at the bar, and the woman who at 9pm looked like she got hit a few too many times with the ugly stick starts to resemble Ivanka Trump by last call…just be patient, and things will look MUCH better. And Republicans who are not playing nice on this need to remember two things: 1) Perfect is the enemy of the good.  Striving for perfection is a fool’s game…reaching consensus on something imperfect is a million times better than nothing…and nothing in this case will get the GOP their sorry asses handed to them in the 2018 midterms; 2) This gem from The Gipper himself, President Reagan…“If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later.”

These dopey Republicans would be wise to take Reagan’s advice.