Is my personal opinion on why ACA repeal lost wrong?

[Jersey Devil]

Republicans in this Congress had two big goals for this year. First, repeal ACA and then tax "reform". I think the mistake they made is tying the two together by including huge Medicaid cuts in the ACA repeal so that they would have a lot more room to maneuver when it comes time for tax cuts.

They overreached, pure and simple.

It seemed pretty clear to me during the ACA debacle that they would have had both Collins and Murkowsky's votes if they kept their hands off Medicaid. So why didn't they?

Was it simply a matter of greed, Republicans wanting everything? Or, perhaps, was there another reason. I suggest that maybe they really didn't want ACA repeal to succeed, thinking that the fact that they tried repeal was enough for their base and threw a poison pill into it knowing that it would sink it. Stranger things have happened.

[sharedvalues]

1. Two reasons: tax cuts for wealthy, say they repealed Obama stuff

Your reason is right -- GOP billionaire donors wanted their tax cuts and wanted to destroy the social safety net to get them.

But that's one of two reasons. The other reason is that GOP has been lying to their voters for 7 years saying they'd improve Obamacare. But that's a lie because Obamacare is a 1990s GOP plan - it's the plan they would have proposed if forced to help people by improving healthcare. There is no way to improve Obamacare furthet without putting more money into it. So the Senate GOP tried to lie their way into repeal, saying repeal would be better than the status quo. Activists and Democrats were able to get just enough of the truth out to kill the bill.

[marylandblue]

2. No, they really wanted Medicaid,

They don't mind if people have healthcare, they just don't want to pay for it, and Medicaid is a big pit of money.

[sharedvalues]

3. Also to second point: GOP wanted repeal

If the GOP merely wanted to say they had tried to repeal, they wouldn't have written Thu's bill to pass in the House. Listen to Vox's The Weeds - two people that have read a lot of healthcare bills say that the Thu bill, unlike bills from earlier in the week, was carefully crafted. And it was carefully crafted to be a bill that the House GOP extremists could pass. McConnell wanted to pass it.

[tblue37]

4. They were attempting a slick 2-reconciliation maneuver, and they NEEDED big Medicaid

cuts in the healthcare bill to provide wiggle room for permanent cuts in their tax bill.

Since they didn't pass a budget last year, this reconciliation counted as last year's. They get one more for the next fiscal year, which starts on Oct. 1.

Therefore, they can use the reconciliation process once more and will try to use it for the tax cuts they want. The reason Mitch tried that slick 2-reconciliations maneuver was because they needed to cut some spending by way of the ostensible health care bill in order to provide revenue neutral wiggle room for their tax "reform," because they hope to make those tax cuts permanent. If they are not revenue neutral, they will expire in 10 years.

Trump couldn't understand why they insisted on doing healthcare first, but that is why--to use the reconciliation trick twice to avoid the filibuster. But since the new fiscal year would prevent them from using the second one, they needed to get healthcare done before Oct. 1.

And THAT is why Mitch was in such a desperate rush on the healthcare bill--and why they needed to cut Medicaid.

[Worktodo]

5. The GOP has gone pure politics

We're the Real People Out Here. The GOP is just people on TV. Seven years of preening on TV doesn't get you policy for the Real World.

How on Earth would the GOP survive if they cratered the insurance market?

How would the GOP survive if they had called the bluff on the debt ceiling?

If you ask me, the three (known) defectors saved their party from its own split from reality.

Trump is just the ultimate result of this "living inside the TV" sickness of the GOP. He has, at his fingertips, more information and investigatory capability than any news outlet in the world. At yet he's watching TV.

It's like a dystopian novel.

[BzaDem]

6. The "skinny repeal" they voted against had no Medicaid cuts. n/t

[gratuitous]

7. I disagree with your opinion

If Republicans didn't want ACA repeal to succeed, they could have fucked it up months ago and moved on. They drew it out for week after agonizing week, messing up insurance company plans for next year (insurance companies work out their rates for the next year in April, May and June), and putting citizens who depend on the ACA through unending agony wondering if they were going to die for lack of access to health care. Republicans also put their own incompetence on display, alienating R-leaning independents, and providing copious examples of their inability to deliver on their promise for everyone to see.

The only conclusion I can draw from Republicans' months-long shitshow is that they really wanted to repeal the ACA, but their slim majorities couldn't agree on how badly they wanted to hurt the American people.

[world wide wally]

8. If the GOP is so "distraught" over government involvement in healthcare because it smacks

of socialism, why are they so in love with Putin and Russia?
Why are they never asked to explain this?