You’ll want to stay healthy now more than ever after failure of GOP bill

Let’s recall the original promise made by President Trump regarding the replacement of Obamacare.

“We’re going to be submitting … a plan. It will be repeal and replace. It will be, essentially, simultaneously. It will be various segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day, or the same week, but probably the same day. Could be the same hour.”

The president’s tweet this morning:

As I have always said, let ObamaCare fail and then come together and do a great healthcare plan. Stay tuned!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2017

That was in response to the news that even the revised Senate reform bill does not have the votes — even when John McCain returns from his surgery — because two more senators have jumped ship, saying the compromise bill isn’t conservative enough.

So now, the Senate will try to pass a bill that officially repeals Obamacare in two years.

The likely consequence of that would be that insurance companies will be motivated to protect themselves by setting rates that deter sick people from signing up — just like in the old days.

That means you’ll want to do whatever it takes to stay healthy until this is fixed.

I saw some speculation that the Senate could pull out a compromise by December, but health care consultant Robert Laszewski doesn’t see any miraculous breakthroughs because there are two directly opposing philosophies.

“For Republicans, the holy grail is to roll back the Medicaid expansion. For Democrats, the holy grail is to maintain the Medicaid expansion. So there is no way the two sides can agree.”

And as for this new idea about “repealing” before there’s a replacement plan ready to go.

“The Republican senators considered that early on and decided that throwing the health insurance markets into turmoil with a repeal bill without coming up with a replacement was not the way to go.”

The bottom line is, it’s over.

“The entire Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare is in tatters right now.”

So Obamacare lives, but it’s a crippled version because, by executive order of the president, the IRS won’t force healthy people to sign up. The main effect of the last six months of the debate has been to spook the insurance markets and make a bad situation worse.

And the president himself seemed to have no idea this was going to happen — he was cheerleading up to the end yesterday.

“The Republican senators are great people, but they have a lot of different states. Some states need this, some states need that. But we’re getting it together and it’s going to happen,” he said.

Trump made the comments while kicking off Made in America Week at the White House.

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