In the tradition of the Clintonometer and the Trump Apocalypse Watch, the Impeach-O-Meter is a wildly subjective and speculative daily estimate of the likelihood that Donald Trump leaves office before his term ends, whether by being impeached (and convicted) or by resigning under threat of same.
Donald Trump gave a speech at the White House on Monday afternoon. The speech had two components:
- Stories about individual families who’ve been unable to get the medical coverage they wanted during the period in which the Affordable Care Act has been in effect. One family’s preferred doctor for their son’s spina bifida wasn’t in-network; one couldn’t get the insurance plan they wanted because premiums rose too high; another couldn’t get their insurance provider to OK the procedures they thought their child needed for a rare condition.
- A call for Republican senators to vote “yes” on Obamacare repeal this week.
But:
- None of the various plans that Republicans have put on the table in recent months would increase financial support for families that are struggling to pay premiums, none of them address the issue of in-network/out-of-network providers, and none of them would require insurers to cover more procedures.
- While the Senate is apparently voting tomorrow on whether to “proceed” to consideration of ACA repeal, Republican leaders haven’t decided what the repeal bill they want their caucus to vote for will actually say.
Trump’s speech was a decent piece of rhetoric given at the right moment to associate himself in the public mind with the push for repeal, but given current confusion about what the Senate will be voting on—given that we don’t know the details of what a final bill’s effects will be or even whether any bill will pass at all—it doesn’t seem possible to say yet whether his strategy is likely to improve his political standing or to damage it. So we’ll leave today’s likelihood of impeachment the same as Friday’s!
