It turns out Republicans fully support government-run health care, despite the collapse of the entire system. They just didn’t like the tax increases funding Obamacare, because Republicans are for servicing socialism through debt, whereas Democrats do it by raising taxes.

The group Americans for Tax Reform is already bragging about the GOP bill’s $1 trillion tax cut. That’s really nice. We can address that with tax policy. But what about our destroyed health care system, which costs the average family thousands per year in premiums and deductibles and drives up the actual cost of the supply side of health care? Health care is the single biggest driver of the deficit, dependency, and economic stagnation, and government-run and regulated health care and insurance is the single biggest reason health care is unaffordable for too many people. What are we going to do about that?

I’m a strong supply-sider and would love tax cuts, but unshackling the most important sector of our economy will do more to grow the economy than any tax cut. One reason why Europe has stagnated for decades is because of socialized medicine. It’s no coincidence that since government-run health care in America has reached a tipping point, we have never reached three percent growth and struggle for even one or two percent.

Republicans have a habit of playing chase the squirrel. Whenever the tab comes due to fulfill a promise on one issue, they immediately discuss another issue. When the time comes to defund Planned Parenthood, they talk about other random provisions in the budget, but when the time comes to restore a free market in health care, they talk about taxes and Planned Parenthood.

The taxes have nothing to do with destroying health care. Most of the revenue in the Obamacare tax increases comes from the increased payroll tax on the wealthy and the 3.8 percent surtax on investment income. The main tax that dealt with health insurance – the tax on “Cadillac plans” – was never actually implemented. Tax increases are never good for the economy, but they had nothing to do with destroying the health care system. It is government-run health care, through regulations, subsidies, and Medicaid expansion that has destroyed health care. Republicans love all those elements.

As such, Republicans have no right to complain about tax hikes needed to fund programs they themselves deem indispensable.

As I’ve questioned before, how can liberal Republicans rail against the taxes and mandates if they fully support, laud, defend, and fight for the key elements of Obamacare? Once you agree that we need the actuarily insolvent regulations, every economist – from right to left – will tell you that we need an individual and employer mandate so that younger and healthier people pay into the system and don’t game it out. And once you are funding the cost-crushing subsidies and Medicaid expansion, which they love so dearly, where is the money going to come from? Taxes, of course. As such, Democrats were right to raise taxes primarily on the very wealthy.

What exactly is their complaint?

The coming humiliation in the Senate that will make Obamacare popular

Meanwhile, Republicans are already preemptively destroying our messaging on health care. The problem with the bill that passed the House is not just the details and structure, although it is a terrible bill, which was made only slightly better by the Freedom Caucus. The problem is the messaging and principles espoused that led to this point and that will only deteriorate in the Senate. This deal was forged to merely get “something passed” as if it were a kidney stone, as Rep. Tom Massie quipped, not a soothing medicine needed to heal an ailment. The real problem is that Republicans have already adopted all of the premises and messaging of the other side. As Mark Levin said earlier this week, “Rather than confront the Left at the base of their arguments, Republican officials by and large live in fear of principles they proclaim at election time but reject at governing time.”

To use an MMA analogy, Republicans have managed to take their winning issue, with Democrats lying unconscious on the mat, and reverse the roles by placing themselves into the losing side of a ground-and-pound.

Where are the Republicans pounding the lectern and speaking to the morality of the issue: how thanks to Obamacare, nobody will have any health care or health insurance; how Iowa might be added to the list of states without insurers thanks to the very mandates these clowns support; how Maryland insurers will experience up to a 150 percent increase in premiums after some Marylanders already saw premiums triple and double; how eastern Tennessee cancer patients can’t get insurance and how premiums in Alaska cost up to $50,000; how Obamacare has created an immoral government-sponsored monopoly for the few insurers that remain?

Instead, Republicans in the Senate will merely focus on Democrat talking points about coverage and pre-existing conditions and just make this bill more liberal. Because the House kept the subsidies, Medicaid expansion, and critical regulations, the door is open for the Senate GOP to take that baseline and focus further on the need to retain or even add more on all three levels rather than address the actual problem.

Without actually driving down prices by healing the free market, Republicans have placed themselves on the hook for further subsidization. They have kept the market-distorting and price-hiking regulations and subsidies – exacerbated by the elimination of the individual and employer mandates. This will place them on defense to raise Medicaid spending even more and dump more money into the high-risk pools. Their $15 billion over nine years is a joke. Instead, Republicans should have completely repealed the regulations and subsidies to drive down prices for almost everyone (especially because Medicaid expansion is already responsible for 80 percent of those who obtained coverage, which is being retained in this bill) and then dumped $250 billion into the high-risk pools as the full replacement. Hence full repeal and full replace instead of 20 percent insolvent repeal and half-assed replace.

House Whip Rep. Steve Scalise is already talking about how “everyone with pre-existing conditions will have affordable coverage” – a utopian goal that implicitly exonerates Democrats and government-run health care from creating the pre-existing condition problem in the first place.

President Trump is praising Australia’s single-payer system.

Rather than pound the lectern and demand our right to free market health care, speak about the immoral government intervention that tethered health insurance to employment, and actually educate the public on the difference between insurance and health care, Senator Bill Cassidy, RINO-La., one of the top Senate Republicans leading the health care debate, is echoing Bernie Sanders on health care being a right. He’s preemptively ascribing blame for losing coverage on the Republican “repeal” effort rather than on Obamacare itself and the daily news stories! If Republicans would simply shut their mouths, the news cycle on Obamacare would speak for itself. Yet they are sabotaging the repeal effort by saddling free market health care with the vices that are inherent in Obamacare every time they speak.

But fear not. When we become Greece and have single-payer health care with 0.3 percent GDP growth every year, Republicans will lower your taxes. (For more from the author of “Republicans Help Promote Obamacare, but Hey … Tax Cuts!” please click HERE)

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With the Freedom Caucus on board for the MacArthur amendment to the GOP’s lousy Obamacare reform bill, all eyes are on the Republican moderates of the House. At their current rate, they are going to kill the bill because they believe it repeals too much of Obamacare. Cowards.

The Hill’s whip list currently has 21 Republicans voting “no” on the legislation. If the GOP loses one more vote, there will not be enough Republicans to get the bill to 217 (with every Democratic member voting against Obamacare reform).

While some members like Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., refuse to vote for the bill because it breaks the Republicans’ promise to fully repeal Obamacare, the majority of no votes are centrists who think the repeal legislation goes too far.

With the bill’s failure likely imminent, the vote has been delayed.

Republicans won't vote on health care this week.

"Did I ever say we were gonna vote this week?" Kevin McCarthy says.

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) April 28, 2017

Just what do the moderates want, short of keeping Obamacare in its current form? The Freedom Caucus bent over backward to find a compromise that they could vote for. When the original promise was full repeal, conservatives compromised to just repealing the insurance regulations driving up premiums. When that fell through, they settled on the current plan to give some states waivers to make repeal of those regulations optional. How do the moderates want to drag the bill further to the left?

By protecting entitlement programs.

Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., said that the moderates could potentially be swayed to vote yes if some changes to Medicaid were undone.

“I think we understand that the MacArthur language is the language,” he said about the amendment made public this week that would allow states to opt out of certain Obamacare requirements. “But there are a couple of other tweaks that could occur on the Medicaid side to help in some extent, without it being such a huge issue that it would lose anybody.”

Centrists opposed to the current version have noted that the bill would cut $880 billion from Medicaid, saying they are concerned about taking coverage away from low-income constituents. Collins said they are worried about provisions in the legislation that would allow states to change their Medicaid funding to a block grant or to a system that would place a per-capita cap on funding, structures that would limit spending but also give states more flexibility about how to use federal dollars.

The sticking point for RINOs is an $880 billion cut to government spending on the Medicaid entitlement program that has repeatedly proved itself to be an abject failure. Seven years of campaign promises from Republicans down the toilet because there are too many members of Congress afraid of touching entitlement programs.

By now it should’ve been clear that the Republican Party had no intention of fully repealing Obamacare. But the concessions demanded by too many Republicans are enlightening.

If Republicans cannot achieve moderate entitlement reform to Obamacare now, what can voters expect from the GOP regarding other pledges — e.g. entitlement reform for the likes of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid writ-large? These are the programs that are driving the mass majority of government spending.

If the Republican Party is the party of smaller government, and its members in power refuse to shrink the size of government, what is the GOP’s raison d’être?

And why should small-government conservatives belong to the Republican Party? (For more from the author of “Obamacare Repeal Is Crashing and Burning Because of RINO Cowards” please click HERE)

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With members of Congress home in their districts for the next two weeks, negotiations over a health care bill repealing and replacing Obamacare remain ongoing as Republicans continue working to gain consensus on a plan.

After the House GOP’s health care bill was pulled from the floor last month, Republicans left Washington, D.C., with little progress made on their campaign promises to repeal and replace Obamacare.

But conservative and centrist Republicans have continued to discuss the path forward for health care reform with fellow lawmakers, the White House, and even Democrats in hopes of brokering a deal.

According to USA Today, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., is in “final negotiations” with Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., co-chairman of the centrist Tuesday Group, and members of House leadership of a deal they hope will win the support of a majority of House Republicans.

The plan to repeal and replace Obamacare would allow states to seek waivers to opt out of some of Obamacare’s regulations, but keep in place a provision that requires insurers to cover customers with pre-existing conditions.

“What we’re trying to do is work through issues that are important to all of us but make sure that pre-existing conditions are taken care of,” Meadows told USA Today.

Meadows and fellow members of the House Freedom Caucus have been urging Republican leaders to put forth legislation that tackles the rising cost of health insurance premiums.

Conservatives felt the original health care bill failed to do that, and in the face of considerable opposition from Freedom Caucus members and centrist Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the bill late last month.

Since then, Meadows has been in frequent contact with his fellow Republicans, GOP leaders, and Vice President Mike Pence in hopes of brokering a deal that repeals some of Obamacare’s insurance regulations—which conservatives say drove up the cost of premiums—but also protects sick patients.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a Freedom Caucus leader, said the group has always been concerned with making sure people with pre-existing conditions are protected.

The conservative caucus backed a plan from Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., that would require insurers to cover patients with pre-existing conditions so long as they maintained continuous coverage.

“We just want to reward responsible behavior,” Jordan told The Daily Signal.

The Ohio Republican said the roughly 30-member Freedom Caucus supports Meadows and his efforts to find consensus on a health care bill, and Jordan said the group’s chairman has briefed his fellow conservatives. But Jordan also stressed that they want to see the proposal’s language first before agreeing to a deal.

“[Meadows] has been working hard to try to figure out a way we can actually bring down premium costs for American families,” Jordan said. “In order to do that, there are certain Obamacare regulations that have to be repealed. That’s what we’ve been focused on and we’ll continue to focus on, and we’re trying to get to an agreement there.”

While Meadows has continued talks with fellow Republicans and the White House, Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., co-chair of the Tuesday Group, has been speaking with House Democrats in an attempt to pursue bipartisan health care reform, he told Axios.

“If we attempt to muscle this thing through on a partisan basis, I feel we’ll have a similar result,” Dent said, referencing Obamacare.

Working with Democrats, he said, would require Republicans to scrap the current health care bill and start over.

Joining Dent and Meadows, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, is also getting in on the health care talks.

According to Axios, the Republican has talked to both Dent and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, about reforming the health care system.

Members of Congress returned to their districts Friday for a two-week recess, and Republicans are already fielding questions from constituents about the future of the Affordable Care Act and their plans to replace the law.

Though lawmakers are scheduled to remain home until the end of April—they’ll return to Washington with four days to pass a stopgap spending bill—Meadows isn’t ruling out an early return.

“It’s our encouragement to have a vote as soon as we possibly can, even perhaps before we return back to D.C. in 13 days,” Meadows told a North Carolina radio station Tuesday.

The Freedom Caucus chairman also said a deal is “very close”—a statement the White House agreed with.

“We clearly are getting closer, more votes are moving in our direction, and these ideas are very helpful as we are getting closer,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said during a press briefing Tuesday. “We feel buoyed by the direction this is going.”

Before members left Washington, Republicans unveiled a late change to the health care bill, called the American Health Care Act, after President Donald Trump urged them to make some progress on the proposal.

On Thursday, the House Rules Committee added an amendment sponsored by Reps. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., and David Schweikert, R-Ariz.—both Freedom Caucus members—to the legislation that created an invisible risk-sharing program, which they say is intended to lower premiums and protect sick customers.

The amendment was created to address the concerns of both centrist Republicans and conservatives, who both took issue with the original health care bill and backed the change. (For more from the author of “Health Care Talks Continue as Republicans Face Questions on Obamacare Repeal” please click HERE)

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Less than two weeks since the collapse of Republicans’ plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, lawmakers and White House officials have revived talks aimed at crafting a health care bill that can make it through Congress.

But a new pitch from the White House designed to get conservative lawmakers on board, though in its early stages, already has left some conservatives skeptical.

“The goal for the Freedom Caucus has always been we want to see a reduction in [health insurance] prices. That’s still the bottom line,” Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., told The Daily Signal. “We’re open to any package of ideas that gets us to that goal of lower premiums.”

“We’re still not quite there yet,” he said. “It’s not a heavy lift, and we always say we’re for free markets. Well, now we have to walk the walk here and get some free markets and drive the price down for the kids.”

The potential deal, on which details are beginning to trickle out, attempts to address conservatives’ most significant concern—they won’t support a health care bill that doesn’t result in lower premiums.

Vice President Mike Pence, joined by White House budget director Mick Mulvaney and President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, outlined the plan to woo conservatives Monday night during a Freedom Caucus meeting.

The potential agreement would allow states to apply for a waiver from the federal government to exempt them from some of Obamacare’s regulations, including the community rating provision, which prohibits insurers from charging sicker customers more through higher premiums.

The Trump administration is also looking at allowing states to opt out of the “essential health benefits” requirements implemented by Obamacare, a list of 10 services that plans are required to cover, and narrowing use of a $115 billion “stability fund” to be spent on high-risk insurance pools.

The approach again could open Republican lawmakers to the charge that, despite their campaign pledges, this particular bill would not repeal Obamacare in full.

“What we all need to acknowledge is that you either are going to keep the framework of Obamacare in place or say we’re going to not have the framework of Obamacare in place,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told The Daily Signal.

“Right now, people are saying you Republicans promised to repeal Obamacare, and if you’re going to keep the framework in place so that states have to opt out, or if you have to rely on a bureaucrat, [then] Price is our bureaucrat,” Biggs said, referring to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. He added:

After this administration is over, we don’t know who the next bureaucrat will be. While Tom Price is going to go through and switch off all the light switches as he possibly can on the regulations, there’s no guarantee that the next person if they come from the other party won’t try to come in and put those switches back up. That’s really what people understand, and why I think they’re kind of skeptical about what the proposals are right now in Washington.

The initial pitch from the White House has piqued the interest of Biggs and other members of the Freedom Caucus, who have maintained that they’re open to negotiating. The group of conservative House members are set on unraveling Obamacare regulations that they say increased the price of premiums for Americans.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the group’s chairman, told reporters Monday that the White House presented a “solid idea.” However, he said, the Freedom Caucus wants to see legislative text, which was expected by late Tuesday.

Biggs said he so far is “agnostic” about the proposal, but found the White House’s attempts to target Obamacare’s regulations “a little bit alluring.”

“There’s some interesting aspects of what was presented, and I think for me, I want to see the language of the bill and analyze the language of the proposal that we have,” he said.

Still, conservative lawmakers are wary of continued control by the federal government over the insurance market, since state governments would need Washington’s approval to opt out of the regulations.

“In one instance, the one I favor, [it’s totally] within the control of the state government to decide what insurance policy provisions best meet the needs of its citizens,” Rep. Mo Brooks, a Freedom Caucus member from Alabama, told The Daily Signal. “In the other instance, the state has to go hat in hand on bended knee, begging the federal government to allow the state to have influence over the insurance policy provisions that are best for that state’s residents.”

Brooks said the agreement presented Monday night to Freedom Caucus members was not one he would support. He said he wants to see Trump and Republican leaders make “larger strides in the direction of what America needs.”

The House GOP leadership’s negotiations over the original bill they said would begin to repeal and replace Obamacare came to a grinding halt March 24 after House Speaker Paul Ryan attempted to bring the legislation, called the American Health Care Act, to a vote.

Ryan withdrew the bill after opposition from conservatives and centrists indicated the votes weren’t there for it to pass.

After some conciliatory statements from Trump, though, came a flurry of criticism from the president. Trump took to his Twitter account to chastise members of the Freedom Caucus, and vowed instead to work with Democrats to reform the health care system.

Republicans are preparing to head home to their districts for a two-week recess, where they’re sure to face questions from constituents on their failed attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare.

But it’s unlikely the Republican conference will be able to send a health care bill to Trump’s desk before the lawmakers leave for home.

In a press conference Tuesday morning, Ryan told reporters that House Republicans were in the “conceptual stage.”

“It’s important that we don’t just win the votes of one caucus or one group, but that we get the votes and the consensus of 216 of our members,” Ryan, R-Wis., said.

Brat, too, dismissed the notion that the White House’s pitch was a “deal,” but instead said the proposal, alongside other provisions floated by Republican lawmakers, was a “good assembly of ideas.”

“We’re all just waiting to see a combination of policies that bring prices down,” Brat said. “We can all get to yes. We’re just all waiting for various policies and ways of putting it together. You’re managing one-fifth of the economy, so that’s not a small little bill.” (For more from the author of “Conservatives Skeptical of White House’s Proposed Changes to Obamacare Replacement Bill” please click HERE)

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Just four days after House Speaker Paul Ryan declared Obamacare the “law of the land,” House Republicans say they’re moving forward with their plan to repeal and replace the health care law despite the divisions in their party on how to reform the health insurance market.

Ryan and members of his leadership team reaffirmed their support for unwinding the Affordable Care Act during a weekly press conference with reporters Tuesday, saying that their first failed attempt to replace Obamacare wouldn’t deter them from moving forward.

“We’re not going to retrench into our corners or put up dividing lines,” Ryan said after a meeting with Republican lawmakers. “There’s too much at stake to get bogged down in all of that.”

The renewed focus on repealing Obamacare came after Ryan decided to withdraw the House GOP’s health care bill Friday, a decision made after it became clear there wouldn’t be enough votes to pass it.

Republicans released their plan to repeal the health care law and implement parts of a replacement at the beginning of the month.

But the bill lacked a natural constituency.

Instead, both centrist Republicans and conservatives decried the plan—conservatives disliked it because they felt it wouldn’t lower the cost of premiums, and centrist Republicans felt it didn’t do enough to protect those newly enrolled in Medicaid.

After pulling the bill, Ryan told reporters “Obamacare is the law of the land” and stressed that Republicans would instead move on to other items on their agenda, like tax reform.

But by Tuesday morning, Republicans appeared to have regrouped, and Ryan stressed the GOP conference would continue to work toward gaining consensus on a replacement plan even as they tackle other legislative priorities.

“We’re going to get this right,” Ryan said, “and in the meantime, we’re going to do all the other work we came here to do.”

Any path forward on Obamacare’s replacement is going to require agreement between conservatives and centrist Republicans, factions of the party that opposed the House GOP’s health care bill for different reasons.

But the two groups appear willing to further engage in talks over health care reform.

According to The New York Times, the House Freedom Caucus and centrist Tuesday Group are engaging in talks with Stephen Bannon, President Donald Trump’s top strategist.

And even Ryan, who said Friday some Republicans in the House couldn’t get to “yes” on the bill, told reporters Tuesday that Republicans would “sit down and talk things out” until they compromise.

“We saw good overtures from those members from different parts of our conference to get there because we all share these goals, and we’re just going to have to figure out how to get it done,” the speaker said.

Ryan wouldn’t elaborate on any details of a new plan or on a timeline. But some conservatives are already plotting their own path.

Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., filed a bill Friday that fully repeals Obamacare. Brooks, along with some conservatives, also may use a legislative tool that would force a floor vote on a bill dismantling the health care law.

The plan requires Brooks to collect 216 signatures on a discharge petition. Once that happens, and after the legislation has remained in committee for 30 days, the lower chamber would be forced to vote on the bill.

“We will find out who is truly for repeal of Obamacare and who is not,” Brooks told reporters. (For more from the author of “House Republicans Renew Plans to Repeal Obamacare After Failed First Attempt” please click HERE)

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