Not a clue among them.
Putting all the eggs in the Obamacare repeal basket is biting Republicans in the butt, again. Now that the law has been implemented, millions of people are benefitting, and the sky has fallen in on no one. In fact, things are going pretty damned well on the Obamacare front and the public as a whole has moved on from thinking this is something worth spending any more time on. But the Republican primary voters—and more importantly, the Koch brothers—have been promised repeal. Fine for them, but for the general election voter in a presidential race, there has to be a replacement plan. That's where the
struggle continues. Because the thing they have to do now is make sure that millions of people don't lose their health care.
Just before Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal revealed his plan to replace ObamaCare last year, he sat down with 15 of Washington’s top conservative healthcare wonks to discuss it. They didn’t approve.
“Near the end, they said, ‘You make a good point, but what you’ve put forward, we just don’t think it’s politically viable,’” Jindal’s long-time adviser Curt Anderson recalled in an interview this week.
To his surprise, he said the group agreed the next GOP nominee couldn’t entirely roll back ObamaCare for fear of losing votes from millions already with coverage. In other words, even ObamaCare’s toughest critics say that parts of the law are here to stay. […]
“Obviously the biggest risk is being perceived as being the Grinch who stole someone’s healthcare,” said Josh Withrow, legislative affairs manager for the conservative group Freedom Works.
“We should be focusing on the fact that healthcare is too expensive. I know it’s not as easy a message to sell as, ‘We’re going to make sure everyone has a plan, but it’s an attempt that has to be made,” he added.
That, according to Jindal at least, is blasphemy. Here's what he said about Scott Walker's
tax breaks to the wealthy, hurt everyone else health insurance plan, which at least gives a nod to the idea that you don't take health insurance away from everyone immediately: "Blasting Walker’s plan as 'ObamaCare lite,' Jindal said his rival's healthcare ideas were so liberal that they were dishonoring the Fourth of July. 'When did conservatism die?' he asked."
That internal conflict within the party is just one of the Republicans' problems, though a major headache for party leaders. The biggest issue they've got is that all the ideas they have don't do a damned thing to solve the problem of rising costs and the challenge of providing universal healthcare coverage. Everything they've come up with, an amalgam of which can be found in Walker's plan, makes things better for insurance companies and worse for the people who need health insurance the most. If you're going to keep private insurance companies in the mix, make sure that all the people with chronic conditions aren't shut out of the system and that health insurance is relatively affordable for everyone, there really aren't ways to do it other than the way Obamacare did. While it's been relatively politically painless for them to leave the Medicaid-eligible crowd out of the mix in red states, actively taking health insurance away from all the Obamacare customers won't be.