Donald Trump and House Republicans celebrate the House’s passage of the American Health Care Act on May 4 at the White House.
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In early 2009, Barack Obama and congressional Democrats began putting together the health care legislation that would become the Affordable Care Act. Appearing on ABC’s This Week on April 19 of that year, then–House Minority Leader John Boehner was asked whether Republicans would propose their own alternative to the bill. “We’re working on a plan,” he said.
The imminent arrival of a consensus Republican health care plan soon became something of a D.C. legend; they were always working hard on one, and it was always very close to being done. When the party won a House majority in late 2010, Rep. Eric Cantor said, for example, that his caucus was ready to “repeal ObamaCare and replace it with commonsense alternatives” as soon as being sworn in. In 2014, Cantor was still vowing that “this year, we will rally around an alternative to ObamaCare and pass it on the floor of the House.” In April 2016, Rep. Fred Upton said his party was about a month away from settling on “a Republican alternative” to the ACA. Etc.
On Monday night, the current version of Republican health care reform failed in the Senate when two hard-line conservatives announced they wouldn’t vote for it. At the moment, it appears that the GOP will not be able to unite during this legislative term around an Obamacare replacement bill despite controlling the presidency and both chambers of Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump have a backup plan, though, and that plan is … taking some more time to work on a plan. On Twitter, Trump urged Republicans to “work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate,” while, in a statement, McConnell proposed repealing Obamacare with a bill that would allow for a “two-year delay” during which the party would create a proposal for “a patient-centered health care system that gives Americans access to quality, affordable care.”
At this point, it seems not just possible but likely that the last transmission aliens receive from Earth before it’s swallowed by the Sun will be an announcement that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell’s immortal cyber-consciousnesses are “weeks away” from introducing a consensus ACA repeal bill.
