2016-12-31 01:37:25 -0500

Fox News is well aware of what the playbook is for Price and the new HHS , Pence-style. Just ask Amy Sandler how helpful Pence was in Indiana for same-sex couples when the hospitals wanted to discriminate against them. Or to be more precise, how helpful Pence was for the hospitals in aiding their discriminatory efforts.



The battle plan for the GOP has already been set – they will be repeating their budget reconciliation move from last summer so they can effectively repeal as much of the ACA as possible without needing a single Dem vote. This bill will be rushed through the new Congress so Trump can happily sign it on the 20th after he gets done with the stack of EO’s that erase all of Obama’s EO’s. There will still be some rudimentary framework of the ACA left in, including the language about telling insurers they can’t bar people for pre-existing conditions. But there will no longer be any funding for the program – particularly after Tom Price and Jeff Sessions publicly drop the appeal that Lynch’s Justice Department has been pursuing about the insurance reimbursements. With that appeal gone, the federal government will no longer be able to provide funds to make any of this work for the insurers, who will quickly exit stage right. I’m sure there will be discussion about how the ACA hasn’t completely been repealed yet and that the GOP is working on various plan ideas – but I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that new plan. These guys had nearly TWENTY YEARS to show a plan after they killed the Hillarycare idea in the early 90s. They’re nowhere closer to coming up with one now – simply because most of them don’t want one anyway.



We need to be prepared for the health care environment to revert back to what it was in early January 2009 – because that is the true goal here. The aim of the Pence group has nothing to do with the patients or even, frankly, the doctors. It has everything to do with smacking Obama and his supporters down as brutally as possible – to punish him for having the temerity to get this through Congress in the first place and to punish the supporters for having the temerity to vote for him twice.



It’s good to hear that Obama and the Dems are looking at how they can try to salvage the ACA and somehow block the behavior of the GOP in the full-on wrecking crew scenario we’re about to see. But the reality is that, as we noted, the GOP doesn’t need a single Dem vote to do any of this. The Dems can jump up and down all they want – it will accomplish nothing. What they frankly do need to do is to remind those millions of people why their health coverage is being taken away. The Dems will need to repeatedly be clear about how the GOP has just dumped all these patients back in the emergency room, and they’re going to need to campaign hard on it in 2018 and 2020.



Knowing Pence and his friends, and knowing Trump’s own personality, the GOP is going to wildly overreach in the frenzy of trying to undo all things Obama and somehow institute a Far Right government against the wishes of most Americans. The Dems need to be able to constantly speak up about these actions, and they will need to speak loudly enough to counter the spin we’ll be getting about it every hour from outlets like Fox News.