From “R&R” to “R&D”: That is shorthand for the GOP’s continuing effort to persuade Americans they are by God serious about producing a workable alternative to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Forget the children’s giddy appreciation of gifts from Santa. It cannot compare with the giddiness of congressional Republicans as they contemplate a quick repeal of Obamacare.
Ever since the health plan became law about six years ago the GOP has lived by a mantra vowing to “Repeal and Replace” it. But replace it with what, exactly? That is still unclear, whatever its purported sincerity. The “R&R” became an instant political twofer. No Republicans voted for the plan so they were free to criticize it in a long-running example of political hypocrisy.
After winning a majority in 2010, House Republicans began casting nearly 50 fruitless votes against the plan, all of them dead on arrival in the Senate or the Oval Office. The strategy, of course, conveniently freed them from the more onerous task of coming up with their own plan for uninsured Americans. Besides, there was always the promise of another quixotic repeal-and-replace moment.
Fast forward to the present. With President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration just weeks away, the GOP has come up with a new anti-Obamacare strategy: “Repeal and Delay.” That is, repeal it – but delay the effective date so they can enact a replacement.
That would seem to ignore bipartisan analyses of Trump’s election, one of which was Hillary Clinton’s failure to reassure financially stressed Americans with specific promises of how she would address their economic fears. Most of them lack health care insurance, although the number of people signing up for Obamacare in 2017 has risen sharply. Trump at least said he favored keeping the Obamacare provisions that mandated coverage for pre-existing conditions and allowing children to remain on their parents’ insurance to age 26.