With Trumpcare dead, Mitch McConnell says he will now schedule a vote on a clean repeal of Obamacare:
In a strategy facing long odds, the majority leader said the Senate would instead vote “in coming days” on a bill the chamber passed in late 2015 to unravel most of the ACA, which former President Barack Obama vetoed in January 2016….But many Republican senators have balked at this strategy, saying they wouldn’t feel comfortable rolling back the ACA without being able to tell their constituents what would supplant it. Mr. McConnell’s new tactic likely represents his desire to wrap up and move on from a bruising fight
This is just political theater. The 2015 bill would repeal the funding for Obamacare, which would indeed destroy it. However, all the insurance industry regs would stay around, as would protections for pre-existing conditions. Insurers would still be required to cover all the essential benefits of Obamacare, and people with expensive conditions would all be allowed to sign up for coverage at the same price as anyone else. This combination would destroy the individual insurance market. Every insurer in the country would withdraw, which would affect everyone with individual insurance, not just the folks who got it through Obamacare.
Even in the GOP’s current fallen state, there are at least three Republican senators who would vote against this.
