This is positively mind-boggling: "A lawsuit winding through the courts could overturn Obamacare and cause millions of people to lose their health insurance, but Senate Republicans say there is nothing to worry about because Congress will come to the rescue."
For real. BuzzFeed interviewed "over a dozen Republican senators," and most of them said they actually think they will ride to the rescue if the Trump-laden federal courts toss the Affordable Care Act in the dustbin. Which has to make anyone who's been paying attention for the last decade wonder exactly what's in that Trump Kool-Aid they've been drinking. Or if, after all this time, the American public is really so easily hoodwinked on this issue.
"It would be noisy and loud but it would need to be done. Congress only seems to get things done when they have to, so this would be one of those 'have to' ones," Sen. James Lankford said. "One thing I've learned in eight and a half years here is you need almost a crisis to concentrate the minds and actually accomplish something, so hopefully we'd be able to do that," said Sen. Ron Johnson.
Even Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who seems to delight in bucking his leadership and voting with Republicans, has to laugh at Republicans over this one. "Nine years!" he crowed to Republican colleagues Mike Rounds and Rob Portman, referring to how long they've been talking about replacing Obamacare and failing. "Oh my god do your job, would you? Son of a bitch."
It's obvious what the real Republican plan is here: that Democrats will bail them out, that they'll be the responsible grown-ups again, and that Republicans will be able to force them to eat a shit sandwich because they've got the lives of 133 million people with pre-existing conditions held hostage. But it's not going to work. Democrats are going to demand that anything they pass be real, and they have the House of Representatives—held by a Democratic majority largely because of health care!—to enforce that. Any bill would have to actually and adequately replace the ACA, with no one being left behind.
"The fantasy world the Republicans continue to live in on health care is a sight to behold," Sen. Chris Murphy told BuzzFeed. "They controlled every branch of government for two years and they couldn't do anything on health care. Why on earth would we be able to restore the full protections in the Affordable Care Act with divided government?"
They wouldn't. Their best hope is that United States Chief Justice John Roberts gets squeamish at the idea of that many lives in his hands and rescues them. Or they could always just make the pending court case against the law moot by repealing the linchpin of the suit, the individual mandate.