Healthcare law still faces obstacles (if we lose the Senate) - LATimes

[flamingdem]

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-na-healthlaw-obstacles-20120701,0,6499632.story

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Democrats would be largely powerless to stop that if they lost the Senate and the White House in November. They now number 51 in the Senate, plus two independents who caucus with the party. It is far from clear that they will retain their edge.

Under Senate rules, legislation that has a fiscal impact can be passed with a simple majority, not the 60-vote supermajority that has become customary to overcome filibusters on important legislation. This process, known as budget reconciliation, was used by Republicans to pass major tax cuts under Bush, and by Democrats to pass the last piece of the healthcare law in 2010.

It may be difficult to use budget reconciliation to repeal the entire health law because some provisions — including consumer protections such as the insurance guarantee — have little direct impact on the federal budget.

But reconciliation could be used to strip out hundreds of billions of dollars of new government spending in the law designed to expand access to Medicaid and to provide subsidies to help millions of low- and moderate-income Americans buy health insurance. Without that money, the law's promise of universal health coverage would be essentially meaningless.

A series of new taxes in the law on insurers, medical device makers and high-income taxpayers — which are designed to offset the cost of expanding coverage — would also be easy to remove. "There is an enormous amount that you could take out," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who now heads the conservative American Action Forum.

Even supporters of the law acknowledge budget reconciliation is a serious threat. "If Republicans control all the levers of policymaking, even if they have a narrow majority in the Senate, they could … eviscerate the Affordable Care Act," said Families USA Executive Director Ron Pollack, a leading consumer advocate.

[still_one]

1. If people are that stupid after all the vile anti-women, anti-civil rights, anti-labor, social

Security and Medicare, then fuck them.

2 terms of bush, 2 terms of ray gun helped drive the deregulation that imploded the financial system

If they haven't had enough of this insanity, then they will eat it

[DCBob]

2. Alot of "ifs" in that logic.

I seriously doubt we lose either the Senate or the WH.

[flamingdem]

3. Not good to take it for granted but Nate is positive:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/democrats-odds-of-retaining-senate-improve/

Democrats’ Odds of Retaining Senate Improve
By NATE SILVER

When we last took an overview of Senate races in December, Republicans appeared to be slight favorites to take control from Democrats, with a net gain of four to five seats representing the most likely outcome.

Since then, however, Republican fortunes have diminished somewhat because of problems with the quality of some candidates and key retirements. Although Republicans are most likely to gain seats on balance because Democrats have considerably more incumbents up for re-election, the question of whether the Republicans will win enough to gain control now appears to be closer to a tossup. In fact, the outcome may depend on who wins the presidential election, as well as whether an independent Senate candidate who is favored in Maine will caucus with the Democrats.

The table below contains the FiveThirtyEight estimates of the probability of victory for each party in the 33 Senate seats to be contested this November. These forecasts, although they are informed by polling and other objective measures, are ultimately reflections of my best judgments and also account for “intangible” factors like candidate quality and the partisan orientation of the state. (We traditionally switch over to purely tangible factors in the summer, once polling becomes more robust and we post the official forecast model for the Senate.)

[Autumn]

4. I think the Health care law still faces obstacles even if we have the Senate

The lobbyists are going to be very busy.

[flamingdem]

5. This is what I was wondering, the article indicates

that it won't be smooth sledding.

The republicans will be pulling every trick possible, the lobbyists even more