Inspector General Probes Trump Administration’s Move To Pull Obamacare Enrollment Ads

[moonshaz]

The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general has launched an investigation into the Trump administration’s decision to pull ads encouraging people to sign up for the Affordable Care Act during the enrollment period. By shutting down such outreach, the action could be seen as a stealth way to starve the health plan without

Comments

[moonshaz]

Ryan et al. didn't ask Democrats for input at all becauuse they weren't interested in improving Obamacare -- they wanted to get rid of it completely, and they knew the Dems were nhft.

The GOP wasn't even interested in replacing the ACA with something else until pretty recently iirc. For years now, the mantra has been "Repeal, repeal, repeal" period. Imo, they only tacked on the "replace" part when they realized that repeal alone was not going to be even a semi viable strategy.

Even then, they didn't work very hard to come up with a halfway decent replacement. Once the GOP had control of both houses of congress AND the Whie House, Ryan and his henchmen figured they could do whatever they wanted, and they didn't even try to come up with something non-shitty. They assumed all the other Repbs would get on board with whatever they shat out, because PARTY UBER ALLES! What they didn't bank on was dissent within their own ranks,  but that's exactly what they got. The hardliners didn't think the propsed AHCA was shitty enough, while the Repubs who were either more moderate or just too scared of their constituents (I think those rowdy townhalls had some impact there) to be comfortable with the existing bill, much less something even shittier took an opposinhg stance. With the tangerine hellbeast bent on rushing the whole thing through, there was no time to build a consensus among the opposing GOP factions, and the whole thing collapsed like the house of cards that it was.

They may try again, but it won't be any time soon. They're goung to move on to something else now and come back to health care later. And when they do, the resistance will be ready and waiting for them.