We heard Susan Collins say the other day that it’s too late to repeal Obamacare. Now Politico says, based on interviews with a dozen GOP strategists, staffers and health care analysts, that the GOP knows that they won’t be able to repeal Obamacare until Obama is out of office and by then it will be too late. They say at some point the language will go from repealing the law to “replacing as much of the law as possible”.
You can harp on the fact that this is Politico, but we all heard Boehner say in 2012 that Obamacare is the law of the land. And as Levin pointed out last week, what Susan Collins is saying openly is what the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate are already thinking:
POLITICO – Deep down, Republicans who know health care know the truth: Obamacare isn’t about to be repealed.
But you won’t hear that in this election — and maybe not in 2016, either.
Republicans may be split on many issues, but they remain fiercely united in their loathing for the Affordable Care Act; they still see it as a terrible law, and they want it to go away. But GOP staffers and health care wonks also know that, even if they win the Senate, they’re not going to accomplish that in the next two years while President Barack Obama is still in office.
And after that? Well, think of the last time a major social program was repealed after three enrollment seasons, with millions of people getting benefits. That’s right — it hasn’t happened.
Just don’t expect a “reckoning” with the voters, where Republicans tell voters they can’t get rid of it — not as long as vows to repeal rile up campaign crowds and serve as fundraising catnip. Instead, the talk will slowly turn to what pieces of the law Republicans might be able to knock out in the next two years, followed by a full airing of plans in the 2016 presidential race that will shift the conversation to “replacing” as much of the law as possible, according to interviews with a dozen GOP strategists, staffers and health care analysts.
Republican candidates will keep shining the spotlight on the law’s problems, and they’ll have to compete with the likes of Ted Cruz, who still gets thunderous applause with his promise to “repeal every word of Obamacare.” But soon, they’re going to have to turn the conversation away from what they’d like to do — and start talking about what they can actually do this late in the game.
“Even the most strident opponents of the ACA are coming around to the realization that, ‘I want to repeal every word, but I don’t think that is feasible,’” said Chris Condeluci, a consultant who’s a rarity in health policy circles: a former Republican Senate staffer who worked on the Affordable Care Act.
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What they can’t do — at least not yet — is break that news to the voters. They haven’t forgotten the uproar when House Speaker John Boehner tried to do that in 2012, after Mitt Romney lost the presidential election and Boehner conceded that “Obamacare is the law of the land.” No one wants to be the second Republican to say that.