GOP Vows Obamacare Repeal To Start 2017. Dems Dare Them.

Republican leaders say they can craft and enact a coverage scheme superior to Obamacare, but they’ve yet to agree on a detailed alternative ? even though they’ve been at it for six years. The plans in circulation now, which consist mostly of principles for reform rather than actual legislation, would all result in some combination of many fewer people insured and far weaker guarantees of coverage.

Typically these plans would mean cheaper insurance for the young and healthy, along with less government spending. But they’d also result in some combination of higher premiums or greater medical expenses for older and sicker people.

And even those plans may be more generous than what would eventually emerge from the legislative process likely to follow a repeal vote. That’s because repeal would immediately roll back Obamacare’s taxes, which consist primarily of fees on the health care industry and new levies on the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans.

It would be a windfall for industries, and for those wealthy taxpayers. But without that revenue in place, crafting an alternative scheme to provide anything resembling comparable coverage would be politically difficult, if not impossible.

At the press conference, Thune gave a list of principles that would guide Senate Republicans as they contemplate alternatives to Obamacare, including more power for states, greater competition and providing relief to small businesses.

Conspicuously absent from the list was any information about the number of people who would have insurance when Republicans were done, or what quality coverage they would have.

Thune and the other Republican leaders went on to express hope that Democrats would join them in this effort ? and, to enact the kind of reforms they have in mind, they would almost surely need at least some Democratic support. That’s because a bill repealing Obamacare’s insurance regulations and imposing new changes couldn’t pass through reconciliation. It would have to go through the regular legislative order, which would be subject to Democratic filibusters.

But Democrats, mindful of how Senate Republicans unified against virtually every major proposal of the Obama years, seem in no mood to help. Instead, at a press conference of their own Tuesday, they warned that repealing the law without an alternative in place would be reckless, that it would cause immediate harm and that promises of a “better way” to bolster health care access were meaningless.

“They have nothing to put in its place,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the incoming minority leader, said. “And believe me, just repealing Obamacare, even though they have nothing to put in its place, and saying they’ll do it sometime down the road, will cause huge calamity, from one end of America to the other. They don’t know what to do. They’re like the dog that caught the bus.”

Schumer also predicted that Republicans would face dire political consequences as a result of their plan.

“To our Republican friends across the aisle,” he said, “bring it on.”