July 18, 2017

With Trumpcare Dead, Will Republicans Move On to Sabotaging Obamacare?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

We now have three Republican senators who oppose a clean repeal of Obamacare, so Mitch McConnell’s spiteful parting shot over the failure of Trumpcare is officially dead too. There will be no Republican health care bill for at least the next two years.

The big question now is what Republicans will do instead. They’ve made it clear that what they want to do is sabotage Obamacare so that it will blow up and they can blame Democrats for its failure. They have two main strategies for undermining Obamacare:

  • Refuse to pay the CSR subsidies to insurance companies. This amounts to about $8 billion per year, which is used to reduce deductibles and copays for low-income workers. If it goes away, insurance companies will have to make up for it with big premium increases.
  • Refuse to enforce the individual mandate. Donald Trump can’t literally remove the mandate from the books, but he can tell the IRS not to enforce it. If that becomes official policy, lots of young, healthy people will forego insurance, knowing that there’s no penalty to pay. This will destabilize insurance pools, which insurance companies will have to make up for by increasing premiums.

These two things will not kill Obamacare. They will not cause a death spiral. They will not cause a mass exodus from the program. In fact, most people won’t even notice anything has happened, since their premiums are capped at a percentage of their income. As premiums go up, their subsidies will go up too, and they won’t pay any more than before.

However, it will hurt middle-class families who make too much money to qualify for subsidies. They’ll see a 20-25 percent increase in their premiums, and they’ll have to pay the whole tab. And that’s after already swallowing a 25 percent premium increase last year.

Are Republicans willing to do this to their middle-class base? Normally I’d say no. That’s crazy. But these are crazy times, and Trump seems to have no qualms about adopting policies that mostly cause pain for his own supporters. “Let Obamacare fail,” he said today. “I’m not going to own it.”

So Republicans might really do it, and then try to lay the blame on Democrats. I don’t think that will work outside of the Fox News bubble, but maybe that’s enough. Stay tuned.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate