To: Sdgla who wrote (982499 ) 11/18/2016 12:09:21 AM From: puborectalis Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1575499 Republicans always insist they will replace Obamacare with something better. And with the prospect of enacting repeal suddenly very real, Republicans are promising they will provide for a smooth transition ? by allowing Obamacare to keep functioning for a year or two after their repeal bill passes, thereby providing enough time to craft a suitable alternative. “We’re not going to have like a two-day period, and we’re not going to have a two-year period where there’s nothing,” Trump said Sunday on “60 Minutes.” “It will be repealed and replaced. It’ll be great health care for much less money.” Sounds good. But why should anybody take that vow seriously? It was only this summer, more than six years after Obamacare became law, that House Republicans reached agreement on what their replacement should look like. And when Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled that proposal, to great fanfare, the architecture turned out to be more like an initial sketch than a set of blueprints. Dollar figures and other key details were missing, making it impossible to say definitively what effect their proposed scheme would have. Senate Republicans are actually further behind. Their leadership hasn’t even agreed upon the most basic principles for reform. And Trump? As a candidate he made vague, sometimes contradictory statements about health care. When he finally released a “plan,” it was even less specific than Ryan’s. Could Trump and congressional leaders flesh out these ideas, work out their differences and close ranks behind a plan? Sure. In so doing they’d have the help of a handful of conservative intellectuals who have actually taken this issue seriously and started the hard work of designing legislation. But the party is far behind where Democrats were in late 2008, when Obama had just won the presidential election and was gearing up for his own push to pass major health care legislation.