There are rumors that the 3rd iteration of the Obamcare repeal and replace bill, GOP Dump& Dupe, will be voted on this week – perhaps tonight, and – brace yourselves – this totally terrible, cruel bill might pass the House and be sent to the Senate. It’s likely that it won’t pass in the Senate, at least not in its current incoherent form, but, who knows? As Steven Benen observes, lots of us cheered when Big Orange got the GOP presidential nomination – no one thought such a clown could ever in a million years win the general election.

But console yourselves. There are some existential bedrocks you will always be able to count on:

After she votes for the revised bill – and she’s not currently counted among the holdouts – those of us who subscribe to Rep. Ann Wagner’s (R-2) email newsletter will get a gushing account of how she battled to save us from that bad, old Obamacare. And she won’t even ask for thanks – she just wants us to stop phoning her about the damn thing, please, and, for god sakes, quit asking her to come to an in-person town hall and actually listen to random concerns of the hoi polloi. Mama did what she had to do to save us from ourselves and no matter how many time we’ve asked her to leave Obamacare alone, she knows that we really don’t mean that at all. After all, St. Louisians stop her in the grocery all the time to tell her to keep on keeping on. At whatever she keeps on at. Working to help bankers, I think.

GOP Senator Roy Blunt will hem and haw in order to persuade us he isn’t as dumb as the rest of his party, but he won’t even require that push comes to shove to make him go along with GOP leadership when/if the bill comes to the Senate – when the inevitable fallout begins, though, he’ll remind you about the hemming and hawing.

Rep. Billy Long (R-7) will carry on about how he held out until he got a dinky little pittance as a down-payment for ineffective high risk pools (along with a in-person goosing from the Big Guy in the White House). He’ll try to persuade you (using standard talking points developed by somebody else ) that this particular thirty pieces of silver makes up for voting to take away protections from folks with preexisting conditions. Nobody but the terminally stupid will be fooled. Oh wait, those are the people who vote for Republicans like Billy Long.

And Vicky Hartzler (R-4) will let us know that Jesus told her to vote for Trumpcare 3.0. She’ll do it indirectly, as befits a congresswoman who has to pretend to serve the heathens too. She runs with Jesus after all and Obamacare was just full of provisions that were hurtful to the Christian Taliban members who worry that they’ll go to hell if they contribute to a common insurance pool that also funds contraception for those who don’t share their beliefs.

Sam Graves (R-6) and Jason Smith (R-8 ) will vote as expected. And if they say anything about it all, they’ll do it in the usual way which consists of whispering over in the corners with safely like-minded supporters. Nobody else actually knows who they are, so no big deal.

But It’s good to know that you can rely on Republicans to be Republicans. Isn’t it?

*Third sentence of 2nd paragraph edited slightly for clarity (5-3-1, 9:51 pm)

I got the missive below in my email yesterday – Donald Trump’s first effort to come out swinging in favor of Paul Ryan’s Dump and Dupe Obamacare replacement. Notice that the staffers doing the President’s thinking White House’s healthcare PR outreach don’t have much to say about Trumpcare (a.k.a. Ryancare, the American Health Care Act or the AHCA) – which is understandable since the only parties that don’t hold Trumpcare in contempt are the bill’s two sponsors and Paul Ryan – and evidently Donald Trump who tweeted that it’s “wonderful” regardless of the fact that it violates every promise he made to his supporters about replacing Obamacare with something better.

So what do you do when you haven’t really got anything nice to say about the program you’re offering as a replacement for Obamacare? Why you keep on trashing Obamacare. You blast out emails like the one below – which I have presented below in sections annotated with italicized interpositions pointing out the more obvious lies and half-truths:

It’s been seven years since Obamacare was passed, and now, more than ever, we are seeing the harmful effects of this disastrous law.

Obamacare (ACA) insured 20 million previously uninsured people through Medicaid expansion and in the private individual health care market through the exchanges. It enacted a tax on those earning over $200,000/yr that shored up the Medicare system, extending its life by four years at this point – a gain that will be lost if the ACA is repealed in favor of the AHCA which eliminates that high-income tax. Some harmful effects!

Obamacare has led to higher costs and fewer health insurance options for millions of hard-working Americans. Independent analysis found 41 states faced higher average healthcare deductibles last year, with 17 states facing double-digit rate increases. Nearly one in five Americans have only one insurer offering Obamacare exchange plans.

In just the past year, Obamacare premiums have increased by 25 percent on the typical plan and coverage choices have dropped by 28 percent as insurers have left the market.

Obamacare did not negatively affect costs for those who receive insurance through their employers; in fact, it slowed the increasing price trajectory in the pre-Obamacare insurance industry. Premiums were rising by an average of 10% a year before Obamacare – and those who had serious illnesses could be charged considerably more – a practice that Obamacare ended. While premiums for those on the exchanges did increase considerably in 2017, the increase was offset by increased subsidies based on income – and consumers were able to use the exchanges to find competitive alternative insurers.

Things are only getting worse. This past year, nearly 20 million American citizens opted not to get healthcare insurance, with 6.5 million paying the penalty and millions more asking for a hardship exemption from the penalty.

Over 48 million people were uninsured before the major provisions of Obamacare took effect. Those with preexisting conditions can get affordable insurance and don’t face lifetime caps thanks to Obamacare. Seems like things have gotten better, not worse.

A higher penalty for refusing to buy insurance, along with more generous subsidies would have brought more younger, healthier people into the exchanges, which would, in turn, have incentivized more insurers to remain in the exchange. Republicans, however, refused to consider fixing these obvious problems. Congress could still decide to fix Obamacare instead of replacing it with the vastly inferior AHCA – a much worse system that will cost more and provide less – or nothing in many cases. But, given the GOP adherence to ideology over pragmatic policy, it’s not likely that a Republican-dominated congress would ever act to make the system better instead of worse

Americans were promised that Obamacare would bring down healthcare costs — that promise was broken. Americans were promised they could keep their healthcare plans under Obamacare – that promise was broken. Americans were promised that Obamacare would not raise taxes on the middle-class – that promise was broken.
The American people want change and President Donald J. Trump promised to repeal and replace this disaster. That is exactly what the President is working with Congress to achieve. Step up and support the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.

Obamacare did slow the growth of healthcare costs as we noted above. Its subsidies made insurance affordable for many in the individual market. Politifact rated the claim that Obamacare raised taxes on the middle class “mostly false,” noting that a few minor associated taxes, like those on tanning salons, might affect the middle class.

Obamacare had problems to be sure – but in most instances they could easily be fixed if Republican in congress were willing to work in good faith with Democrats to insure the program’s success.

So what about Trumpcare? Estimates are that it could leave more than 15,000 people who are currently insured under Obamacare without coverage, cause premiums to raise for even those in the employer-based market, and perhaps ultimately destroy the entire individual market. Pretty clear why the White House doesn’t want to talk about Trumpcare, but prefers to resort to the type of lies about Obamacare they’ve been peddling for the past seven years. Nancy LeTourneau best describes what we get in Trump’s surrender to the Republican ideology that he has ipso facto endorsed – despite his earlier promises to do the opposite:

This embrace of ideology over competence is exactly how we’ve arrived at a post-truth era. An abandonment of facts/data coupled with emotional appeals (often based on lies) have been the tools used to promote ideology. The Republican Party remains devoid of any principles based on the pragmatism of what works. It is possible that, in their zeal, they will be able to destroy Obamacare and maybe even pass their massive tax cuts for the most wealthy among us — all while ignoring the facts about what a disaster those policies will be.

*Formatting revised for readability, text with links to White House Web Page eliminated)  (3/11/2017; 11:31)