Rand Paul protests outside room where House Republicans are hammering

>Since 2010, Republicans like Paul have described the passage of the ACA as an opaque and secret-laden process, one that Democrats rightly paid a price for. For seven years, they’ve summed up the law’s passage with a quote that then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gave to the National Association of Counties: “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy.”

>Since then Republicans have promised that their repeal of the ACA would avoid the tumult of the 2009-2010 process by which it was passed.

>“We’re not hatching some bill in a backroom and plopping it on the American people’s front door,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said on NBC’s “Today” this week.

>It’s common for complex legislation to be worked over in private by committees ahead of a public markup, with the text of the bill available to the public two days in advance. But Paul, who has introduced his own ACA replacement bill with the backing of the House Freedom Caucus, used his visit to H157 to brand the meeting as a violation of the Republican Party’s promises.

>“In my state, in Kentucky, it’s illegal to do this,” he said, gesturing to the door he wasn’t allowed to walk through. “This is being presented as if it were a national secret, as if this were a plot to invade another country.”

>As more reporters craned their necks and pointed their recorders, Paul denounced the aspects of the GOP replacement bill that he’d learned from media sources and conservative House members.

>“What we’re hearing rumors of is that parts of Obamacare are left in place,” he said. “For example, the ‘Cadillac tax’ will be left in place but renamed. The individual mandate will be left in place, and instead of paying the government a penalty, you’ll be paying an insurance penalty. These, to me, are Democrat ideas.”
...

>For a few more minutes, Paul attempted to carry out a news conference in a space designed for anything but. Capitol Police moved around the group of reporters and called out when a staffer trying to get around the crowd stumbled over a tripod. Paul wrapped it up only when Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), a member of the committee, was unable to enter the room.

>“We will put a formal protest in now,” said Paul. “This is the beginning of this. I expect public pressure will get them to release this.”

>In a statement released after Paul left, Ryan’s office pointed out that the Kentucky senator was protesting not a bill, but a place where legislators were trying to meet. The bill was being hammered out, with a markup scheduled for the coming week. “The Energy and Commerce Committee members are working on their portion of the health-care repeal and replace plan,” said Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong. “We would refer you to the committee for more.”

>But that statement did not close down the circus. While Paul was holding court near H157, Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) led another group of reporters on a sort of scavenger hunt to the Energy and Commerce committee’s main hearing room and through a Capitol basement. House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer arrived at H157 shortly after Paul, telling a bust of Abraham Lincoln that he couldn’t find the bill, as a staffer filmed the encounter for Facebook. For an afternoon, Democrats and conservatives were feeling the same, befuddled mood.

>“We asked for the score and all that. We were told we’ll have that by the time it gets to the floor,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a Paul ally in the House. “We need to have that now! You can’t have a discussion about this proposal independent from costs. It’s ridiculous. That’s kind of like, just ‘vote it to see what’s in it.'”

>>116886
Fucking christ. It's like a circus every day.

>instead of paying the government a penalty, you’ll be paying an insurance penalty
>These, to me, are Democrat ideas

He's not wrong

IT'S HAPPENING!

>>116888
>>“We’re not hatching some bill in a backroom and plopping it on the American people’s front door,”
That sounds like that's literally what they're doing
This administration blows

They can't come up with a politically expedient alternative to the ACA that affords citizens the same protections because there isn't one. Unless they were willing to consider a public-option or single-payer system.

The insurance business model is built around people without any immediate need paying into the system so that when some of them encounter an emergency, they need not fear bankruptcy.
It doesn't make any sense for an insurance company to cover someone who has predictable costs higher than their premiums.

If the government doesn't subsidize insurance companies and regulate the minimum coverage they're required to provide, they can't or won't care for everyone. If everyone isn't required to purchase some insurance, the government will have to source the funds to provide those subsidies from elsewhere.
Without the ACA, we'll go back to a portion of the population having to choose between meds and food or housing.

So they'll either tinker with the ACA to produce something superficially different. Or what I think is more likely because it will keep the hardline conservatives happy is that they'll scrap it altogether but creatively enough so that they'll have some plausable deniability to blame the ACA failing by itself for the citizens that become invalids as a result.

The only reason health insurance has to be a thing in the first place is because hospitals and doctors get to mark everything up 1000% from cost. It's backwards that health care as a sector is a for profit industry, to say nothing of health insurance. It's really bad for everyone that these congressional republicans want the government to subsidize this failed business model with tax credits as a temporary band-aid which won't address the real problems.

>>116976
>plausable deniability to blame the ACA failing by itself for the citizens that become invalids as a result.
Didn't they already do that with the states that fought the ACA, made it difficult to work and the used their places as examples of it being failed?
The
>pay insurance instead of the state
Spooks my nooks
Feel like a sign of corporate meddling

>>116960

Trump isn't left or right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock, powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly, regulated by the US department of energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility.

After that, I turned the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the national aeronautics and space administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of US department of agriculture inspected food which has been determined as safe by the food and drug administration.

At the appropriate time as kept accurate by the national institute of standards and technology and the US naval observatory, I get into my national highway traffic safety administration approved car and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the environmental protection agency, using legal tender issued by the federal reserve bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US postal service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the departmental of labor and the occupational safety and health administration, I drive back to my house which has not been burned down thanks to to the state and local building codes and the fire marshal's inspection, and it has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log onto the internet, which was developed by the US department of defense, and post on the free public access website 4chan about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

>>117052
I mean honestly, will his supporters or administration ever own up to anything? I've never even heard this response considering the far wingers he has in his cabinet.

Give me a break

>>117120
When he says third position, what he means to say is fascism. So yes, checks out.

There's something about Rand Paul that always makes me cringe