Yogi couldn’t have said it better

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

BlueRidgeNow.com

Times-News Online

March 19, 2017

“It’s deja vu all over again” is one of Hall of Fame Yankee catcher Yogi Berra’s best Yogi-isms. Little did he know he would be a prophet when it came to health care reform.

What that means is that in 2017 the Republicans are successfully cornering themselves on health care reform just as the Democrats did in 2009.

The election in 2008 gave President Barack Obama and the Democrats control of the levers of government at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. As the newly minted president and his team were being assembled, the nation’s economy was imploding. Nonetheless, Obama chose to make health care reform his top priority.

He chose unwisely, and over the course of his tenure, he and the Democrats on the Hill would make many additional unwise choices regarding what came to be known as Obamacare.

For the Republicans, so long as they have has been in the minority, Obamacare has been the gift that never stopped giving. Voter fury directed at the way the Democrats railroaded it through Congress and at its extensive reliance on coercive federal regulatory and tax power enabled the Republicans to capture the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. The wave they rode was brilliant and simple to grasp — repeal and replace.

And in 2016, opposition to Obamacare played a significant role in producing the greatest upset in American political history — the election of Donald Trump. The Republicans, to their amazement, had run the table. At last they were in a position to govern, to demonstrate to the nation that they knew what to do and how to do it.

How have they begun? By unwisely starting with their long-standing promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. And that means the rest of President Trump’s legislative agenda — tax and regulatory reform, job creation, the infrastructure rebuild, border security and immigration reform, and more — is now held hostage to the GOP’s ability to successfully deliver on its Obamacare promise.

That’s not a risk you take if you don’t have a winning hand, and it’s clear the Republicans don’t. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that, under Speaker Paul Ryan’s bill, 24 million people will lose their health insurance over the next decade, including 14 million people next year.

In the House, the GOP has cornered itself between the speaker’s bill, which will result in millions of Americans losing coverage, and the strident opposition of the House Freedom Caucus, which is gung-ho for repeal of Obamacare but too unconcerned with either the human or the political consequences of its draconian worldview.

If Ryan’s bill squeaks by in the House, and that’s no certainty, it will be dead on arrival in the Senate. The Senate will rewrite it, and the only successful way to do that is on a bipartisan basis. Major social legislation such as Social Security, civil rights, voting rights and Medicare all had significant support from both parties on final passage and have endured. Obamacare didn’t, and Ryan’s bill won’t. Kapish?

Passing the bill in the Senate under budget reconciliation requires 51 votes. There are only 52 Republican senators, so they can’t afford more than two defections. That’s their Achilles’ heel. Three or more conservative GOP senators, led by Rand Paul of Kentucky, won’t vote for the Ryan bill because it’s too much like Obamacare. At the same time, a larger group of more moderate Republican senators won’t vote for the Ryan bill because it’s too conservative. Mollify either group, and you still don’t have 51 votes.

That reality kills the House bill. The only way to break this impasse is to add Democratic votes. Here’s how: The solution is to enable those millions of at-risk individuals to participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).

The FEHBP has been in existence since 1960. It is a working partnership between private health insurance companies and the federal government. Prior to Obamacare, it was the largest health insurance program in the nation. Try to find one of its millions of insured people who doesn’t like it. You can’t!

Its coverages exceed those of Obamacare. Its enrollees get to choose among multiple fee-for-service or HMO insurance plans during open season each year. Its premiums are reasonable because the federal government subsidizes them. Democrats and Republicans alike have enthusiastically supported the program for decades.

There is, however, a problem — the costs of the premium subsidies for those who would otherwise lose their health insurance. Those costs will be significant. But there is no way to cover all of these Americans now at risk of losing their insurance without some form of subsidy.

The Ryan bill proposes to eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in Obamacare taxes, principally on the wealthy. The wealthy don’t need another tax break. Instead, those dollars should be used to subsidize the premiums of those entering the FEHBP.

The FEHBP option would replace Obamacare with a program that actually works. It would attract essential Democratic votes in Congress. It would at last make health care reform bipartisan.

Achieving this outcome won’t come from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Sen. Chuck Schumer. They’re too partisan. But it could come from President Trump. He’s told us he’s a master dealmaker. It’s time for him to put up or shut up. After all, Yogi also said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:

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