Skunks in the Chicken House!

What is a United States Senator doing sticking his nose in somewhere I don't think it yet belongs. Why is a senator trying to disrupt the vote that is first set and truly should first come forward in the House? No, really! Why? I don't get it.

Senator Rand Paul started his attention seeking theatrics weeks ago. He was dead set to paint the new healthcare bill as something disastrous. He was the first one to call it "Obamacare Light", wasn't he? Well, he was successful in bringing the damage he sought. The bill failed and he couldn't be happier. What was that all about? Why wasn't he working to make the bill something more successful, instead of aggressively fighting it every step of the way?

The Freedom Caucus (conservative members of the House) was very influential and indeed successful in getting some important changes to the bill. If the citizens had been educated about those changes, they surely would have wanted their representatives to support it. But I just don't think people understood. The misinformation out there that comments on social media reveal is unbelievable. I do understand why it was so difficult though. I really, really had to work at finding the correct information. It was terribly confusing. I was beginning to think no one understood.

But aligning themselves with Democrats, those that think of themselves as the most conservative members are, in fact, the ones that caused this bill to fail. It was extremely disappointing for me, because many of these conservatives are usually the people I like to support. But for them, the bill simply wasn't "pure' enough so they voted "no". They wanted it their way or the highway. They wanted it all or nothing. But actually, when does 100% ever work in government? It doesn't, and it never has. They were successful in making it look like it was only the efforts of the evil RINO's (Republicans In Name Only) who were pushing this bill forward and seeking passage. That simply isn't the case. I am tired of the intended division that is caused by name-calling and finger-pointing. The truth is, in my opinion, is that the members that voted "no", were far more concerned that they would lose their legislative seats, than passing this legislation. That fear seems to have controlled them and appeared more important to them than taking the time to educate their constituents about what the bill entailed. Politics before what is best for our nation.

There is no one that understands Constitutional Law with a Christian perspective better than Jay Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice. They came out in support of this bill. On Friday before the vote, Jay and his son, Jordan, did an excellent live review of the law and the reasons they supported it. It made more sense than anything I have seen, read, or heard. You can view it here and I recommend it to everyone.

 

Here is a quick break down in terms of the bill that someone as simple minded as me can understand:

• It got rid of the individual mandate.
• It got rid of the employer mandate.
• It put things back in state control.
• It rolled back taxes. This would have been repealed and taxes RETURNED!
• It eliminated the issues that were a problem for businesses like Hobby Lobby.
• It eliminated funding of Planned Parenthood.
• It would have helped the economy!

Many people have said they were concerned about the apparent rush to push the bill through the House. They lamented that it was happening so fast. But there was a reason for that. Federal funding comes up in April. Now that this bill has failed, Planned Parenthood will once again be funded. The passage of this bill would have prevented that funding and time was of the essence.

The points in the above list are the simple terms that are important to me. These are the facts that I can relate to and figure out for myself. Below is a post I took from Facebook. It is written by someone that knows a whole heck of a lot more than me. I am sorry I did not get his name. He has outlined the bill and the three phases it was designed to reach in more official terms. He demonstrates what was to happen in each of the three phases that would have occurred had this first phase passed. This is what the gentleman wrote:

"Bottom line you and other Freedom Caucus members only want to repeal Obamacare with no replacement. That will require 60 votes in the Senate.

Executive summary of what you did not support:

The Three Phase Approach to Repeal and Replace Obamacare ...

Phase 1 ...

REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE ...
(Budget reconciliation process requiring 51 votes in Senate):

▶ Eliminate Obamacare’s mandates and penalties.▶ Dismantle the trillion dollars of Obamacare taxes.
▶ Provide real assistance for the middle class through tax credits to help individuals and families purchase the insurance they want.
▶ Put Medicaid, the Federal Government's primary health care program for low income individuals and families on a sustainable foundation.▶ Give individuals and families more control over their healthcare dollars and decisions by expanding Health Savings Accounts (HSA).▶ Provide resources and flexibility to States to empower them to bring premiums down and help their vulnerable citizens.

Phase 2 ...

PROVIDE ESSENTIAL REGULATORY RELIEF ...
(HHS/Tom Price):

▶ Adopting regulatory reforms to stabilize insurance markets and increase coverage choices for patients, including insurance portability and purchasing across state lines beginning as early as 2018.
▶ Loosening restrictions on the financial structure of insurance plans offered on the Obamacare exchanges, which will give individuals and families access to lower premium options.
▶ Improving choices for patients and putting downward pressure on prices by curbing abuses of the enrollment processes and encouraging full-year enrollment.

Phase 3 ...

REFORM HEALTHCARE THROUGH ADDITIONAL LEGISLATION ...
(Outside of budget reconciliation process that requires 60 votes in Senate):

▶ Allow health insurance to be sold across state lines.▶ Allow Americans to use the money in their HSAs to pay for more healthcare costs.
▶ Streamline processes at the FDA, removing the red tape that slows down approvals of generic competitors to high-price drugs in order to lower the cost of medicine.
▶ Allow small businesses to band together, through Association Health Plans, and negotiate for lower health insurance costs for their employees .
▶ Reform the medical malpractice lawsuit system by ending doctors’ incentives to practice unnecessarily costly medicine.

Return power to the states to:

▶ Set the safeguards and other parameters governing their own health insurance markets, including repealing any of Obamacare’s insurance market distortions that could not be included in a budget reconciliation bill .
▶ Set priorities and enact creative solutions for serving their most vulnerable citizens in the Medicaid program.
▶ Lower premiums for everyone in their state through the use of high risk pools, reinsurance, health savings accounts, and other solutions, and provide assistance to lower income people."

Sounds pretty darn good to me.

So many (including Sean Hannity) were saying: "The Republicans have had 7 years to get this done!" Blame, blame, blame! "Why didn't they have something ready?" is the oft repeated refrain.

But the truth is Republicans did have the bill ready. It was the previously written Tom Price Bill and President Trump strategically appointed Tom Price as Director of Health and Human Services. The bill WAS ready! They were using the previous bill that Tom Price had helped prepare.

The attitude that we saw, yesterday, in the few Republicans that wouldn't support this bill is what kept it from moving forward and it is a dangerous attitude, in my opinion. It is the same attitude that we saw in 2008 and 2012 when the Ron Paul agenda so badly divided conservatives that people stayed home in the general election, rather than get out and vote for someone that Ron Paul had deemed as a RINO (Republican In Name Only). Because of that divide we got Obama - not just once, but twice. Yeah that claim to "purity" really worked well, didn't it?

Why is it always the Paul's that do the disrupting? Why is it yet another Paul that once again keeps a conservative plan, strategy, or answer from moving forward? You know, the Paul's that keep claiming to be not really Republican, but libertarian?

I still suspect a skunk in the chicken house, just as I did in 2008 and 2012. It is interesting to me it is two of the same name. Surely their disruptive efforts and continued success to those ends are just coincidental, but I am really getting tired of it. 

Rand's bill is supposedly ready; waiting in the wings to move forward. It remains to be seen if it is indeed anymore conservative than this one was, or if it will even get anywhere. It will be interesting to see. If it isn't, we can safely assume all the distraction and dissatisfaction Rand created was only about Rand and getting his name on the bill. That name. Things smell like a skunk to me.