The Slatest

The Truly Spectacular Metaphors Republicans Are Using to Explain the Obamacare Repeal Process

“So a goat walks into a healthcare bar…”

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Say you are confused about how this Obamacare repeal, delay and replace process is going down, both in how it’s going to work its way through Congress and what will replace it. That puts you in line with everyone, including most of the people in Congress managing this process. Congressional leaders can concisely plot out individual steps but never the full stairwell.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that my last sentence employed the literary device of metaphor. This is the same device that Republican members of Congress, trying to explain this jargon-heavy process of concurrent resolutions and reconciliation instructions, are relying upon to communicate with the American people. Allow us to share a few.

The taxi metaphor

One unusual ad hoc coalition that’s formed in the House during the early debate is between the GOP’s most moderate members, represented by Rep. Charlie Dent, and its most conservative members, like Rep. Mark Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan. Each faction has raised concerns about rapidly repealing the Affordable Care Act without first having a replacement plan, or even an outline of a replacement plan, ready to go. This doesn’t seem like a complaint that requires a metaphor for illucidation, but Meadows has one anyway. “It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to get in that taxi and make good time, but I don’t know where I’m going,” Meadows said. “I want to know where I’m going.”

The bridge metaphor

Congressman, congressman. Allow Senators Mike Enzi and Lamar Alexander to tell you where your taxi is going. It is going to a bridge—a bridge of health care.

There are, in the metaphor these two senators have jointly settled on to describe the repeal and replace process, two health care bridges. The old health care bridge is Obamacare. It’s a crap bridge. The new health care bridge will be a patient-oriented, free-market, low-deductible, patient-doctor-relationship-preserving bridge that gives working people more flexibility in managing their care. There will also be more than one new health care bridge.

Sen. Alexander explains:

One way to think about what “simultaneously” and “concurrently” mean is to think about Obamacare in the same way you would think about a collapsing bridge in your hometown, because that is just what is happening with Obamacare. […]

If your local bridge in Wyoming or Tennessee were “very near collapse,” the first thing you would do is send in a rescue crew to repair it temporarily so no one else is hurt.

Then you would build a better bridge, or more accurately, many bridges, as states develop their own plans for providing access to truly affordable health care to replace the old bridge. Finally, when the new bridges are finished you would close the old bridge.

That is how we propose to proceed: to rescue those trapped in a failing system, to replace that system with a functional market, or markets, and then repeal Obamacare for good.

Or, the succinct version from Enzi: “The Obamacare bridge is collapsing, and we’re sending in a rescue team. Then we’ll build new bridges to better health care, and finally, when these new bridges are finished, we’ll close the old bridge.” (It’s peculiar that Enzi and Alexander settle on bridges deemed “very near collapse” as the common-sense metaphor for what gets immediate legislative action, when the repair of actual bridges deemed “very near collapse” is a perennial source of congressional gridlock.)

The goat house metaphor

In the best repeal and replace metaphor of all, there are no directionless taxis. There are no bad health care bridges or new patient-centric bridges. No transit is involved, because you never leave your home. The only thing leaving your home is the gosh darn goat who’s been trashing the place.

I present Rep. Drew Ferguson, a freshman member we’ll be following closely now, on the House floor Friday morning:

The need for this process can best be explained by a story I’ve been telling my colleagues. A little over six years ago I lived in a pretty decent house. And one day I heard a knock on the door. Before I knew it, my colleagues from the other side of the aisle had let a goat loose in my house. Now for six years that goat has been messing in and destroying my house. I want to renovate my house, but before I can, I have to get the goat out of the house before it does any more damage. It makes no sense to start fixing up my house until we get the goat out. Voting for the fiscal year ’17 budget resolution gets this goat out of my house. Mr. Speaker, make no mistake, we must renovate our house.

On Friday afternoon, the House voted 226 to 199 to pass Senate Concurrent Resolution 3, which instructs relevant committees to write legislation demanding that a certain fiendish goat be transported via taxi to an old bridge, to be blown up. It’s not that complicated.