“Republicans’ strong showing in this week’s mid-term elections opens the door to more calls to repeal President Obama’s signature law, the Affordable Care Act.
And while that is all but impossible given the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, victories in Washington and at the state level could usher in other healthcare changes.”
“Tuesday’s re-election of Republican governors in closely contested races in Florida, Georgia, Wisconsin, Maine and Kansas dims the chances of Medicaid expansion in those states.
Advocates hoping for Democratic victories in those states were disappointed by the outcomes, but Alaska, which also has a Republican incumbent, remains in play as an independent challenger holds a narrow lead going into a count of absentee ballots.”
“Republicans took control of the Senate and made gains in the GOP-controlled House on Tuesday. “This is a chance to begin to save this country,” declared probable Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Election Day.
Now it’s time to find out if he means it.
Americans just repudiated the colossal disaster that is Barack Obama. At the center of his failed presidency — Obamacare.”
“Even before voters headed to the polls on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had begun to downplay the midterm elections.
“Nothing to see here” no doubt has begun to be scribbled into the talking points regarding every hard-fought blue-state campaign.
Despite the political spin, you can bet your bottom dollar—nearly $4 billion of which have been spent in this election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org—the Democrats are hurting.”
“Fox News’ Megyn Kelly grilled House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., about whether a Republican-controlled Congress would seek to repeal Obamacare.
After repeated questions from Kelly, McCarthy said, “I would press for [a vote to repeal Obamacare] when we have ability to replace it at the same time.””
“President Reagan gauged the success of a welfare program by how quickly people were able to move off government assistance and into remunerative work. Yet President Obama, the White House, and their allies are measuring the success of Obamacare by how many people can be enrolled in their new government entitlement programs.
The president celebrated the law’s “success” in getting seven million people enrolled in Medicaid and eight million (or so) people enrolled in exchange coverage, 87 percent of whom are receiving government subsidies for their insurance. And he hopes to lure another five million people onto Obamacare programs starting with the November 15 enrollment period. There is no expectation that participation in these government programs will be a temporary boost but rather that they will become a permanent fixture in people’s lives.”
“Since enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, much of the attention in the policy community has been on modernizing Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service (FFS) program. Through Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), larger “bundles” of payments to fee-for-service providers for episodes of care, and tests of pay-for-performance models, the hope is that the traditional Medicare model can be remade through sheer force of bureaucratic will. The stated intent is to find a way to pay for value, not volume.
These efforts may or may not bear much fruit, but, over the longer term, it’s not likely to matter much. That’s because a more important transformation of Medicare is already well underway and is occurring despite more resistance than assistance from the program’s bureaucracy. According to the 2014 Medicare Trustees’ report, enrollment in Medicare Advantage – the private plan option in Medicare — has been surging for a decade.
“During his post-midterm press conference yesterday, President Obama falsely claimed that Obamacare is working for Americans all over the country. Based on his rhetoric, he also seemed to fail at understanding the damage votes for his signature piece of legislation did to his former Democrat majority in the Senate.
According to Tuesday’s results and elections over the past few years, 28 Senators who voted for Obamacare will no longer be holding seats on Capitol Hill when January rolls around.”
“On Dec. 24, 2009, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed President Obama’s healthcare law with a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority, triggering a massive backlash that propelled Republicans to control of the House the following year. On the Senate side, going into Tuesday’s elections, 24 senators who voted for Obamacare were already out or not going be part of the new Senate being sworn in on January.
To be sure, it isn’t fair to attribute all of the turnover in the chamber to Obamacare. Many senators voted for Obamacare and lost re-election battles in which they were hit hard for their support for the law, and other Democrats were forced to retire because they had no hope of getting re-elected given their support for the law. But in some cases — such as John Kerry leaving his seat to become secretary of state, or Robert Byrd passing away — Obamacare clearly had nothing to do with it.”
“Republicans have retaken the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections. As of this writing, Republicans will gain somewhere between 7 and 9 seats—depending on what happens in Louisiana and Alaska—for a total of 52 to 54. The new Republican majority will doubtless hold a symbolic vote to repeal Obamacare. But more importantly, Republicans will now be able make smaller changes to the health law that President Obama might actually sign into law. Here are some of the possibilities that have been talked about in the press, but also many that have not.”
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