Give the Freedom Caucus an inch and they'll take you hostage
by digby
I'm not sure who in the White House is running the show on this new health care reboot, but it looks as though they think appeasing the Freedom Caucus in every way is the right negotiating tactic. They seem not to understand that for every concession to these nuts, they lose more mainstream conservatives. And the Freedom caucus is likely to tell him to shove it in the end anyway.
But hey, Trump is the greatest negotiator the world has ever known so who knows?
Attempts to reach a deal this week on health care are unraveling fast, with conservatives already blaming House Speaker Paul Ryan for blocking the White House bill, and leadership sources saying that's nonsense and that the Freedom Caucus is making unreasonable demands that are losing net votes.
It's a bad sign for Republicans ahead of Vice President Mike Pence's visit to the Capitol tonight. From a senior Republican source:
While we haven't picked up any votes yet, this concept is already showing signs of losing a ton of them.
The Freedom Caucus and conservative group perspective: The bill's text is changing for the worse, and it no longer looks like some of the Obamacare regulations will be waived. Conservatives are growing doubtful that the White House and House leadership are willing to get rid of Obamacare's ban on charging sick people higher premiums. Conservatives also want to know what leadership has to say about the "medical loss ratio," or the Obamacare regulation limiting how much of insurers' revenue can be profit.
They're also not happy about the accusation that getting rid of the Obamacare ban on charging higher premiums would nullify its protections for pre-existing conditions.
A Freedom Caucus source: "We've never ever wanted to go after pre-existing conditions. That's spin (well a lie) meant to undermine us. Pence said he supports our plan of reforming, and funding changes to high risk pools, specifically to deal with pre-existing conditions."
House leadership perspective: Where the plan is heading will potentially lose more votes than it picks up. The Freedom Caucus, they say, is moving the goal posts again and trying to shift blame.
The FC's protestations to the contrary, their "high risk pools" are bullshit. We had that before. It's didn't work because most people can't afford to pay thousands of dollars a month in premiums.
But they thinks there's some magic involved in all this that doesn't require them to concede that ... there's no magic in this.
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