Crosstalk: October 5, 2017

Twila Brase is the president of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom and a certified public health nurse. Twila not only has testified before state legislative bodies but also meets with members of Congress.

For several years, House and Senate leadership have been telling us that they would repeal Obamacare. Time and time again we'd see legislation introduced which more or less reworked Obamacare but these efforts didn't seem to represent the repeal that was promised. We were also told that a reconciliation vote by a simple majority would be needed to take place by September 30th or it would be too late as a new fiscal year began October 1st.

So where do we go from here? We no longer have a secretary of health and human services. Should we just sit by and wait for the collapse to take place? Should the House and Senate do things to prop up Obamacare? Is there any hope of repeal?

Twila believes there are some legislators who want to repeal Obamacare but of the bills that were put forth that appeared to be designed to do that, none of them were an actual repeal. Instead, they were different examples of the federal government giving some power back to the states but in reality, federal strings would still have been attached.

Since a bill truly designed for repeal was never put forward, all that happened was pieces were manipulated and that resulted in arguing. Twila believes that a real repeal would have forced members to put a vote down and then be judged on the basis of whether they really wanted to repeal Obamacare or not. Since that never happened, she thinks it's pretty clear that Congress and the Senate have no interest whatsoever in repealing the Affordable Care Act.

According to Twila we're never in a place where nothing can be done. Legislators have to have the will which right now they don't seem to have. Republican Lamar Alexander is working with Democrat Patty Murray. He wants one year of cost sharing reduction subsidies and she wants 2 years. Those are the subsidies that the House sued President Obama for paying because in Obamacare there's no money for those subsidies.

President Trumped still hasn't dropped his lawsuit. If Trump were to drop the appeal and stop paying the subsidies, that would not destabilize the market as some Republicans think it will. It would force the states to reopen their legislatures and come in for special sessions so that they can take back control of health care in their states at which point they can begin to offer truly affordable, catastrophic coverage for everyone. The states can do this by standing under the 10th Amendment because they know the Trump administration won't sue them for giving people something Obamacare won't allow. The problem is, Congress appears to be unwilling to let this destabilization happen so that states can reassert control.

As this broadcast continued, listeners had a chance to find out what happened to the repeal efforts by looking back and hearing what Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan had to say. Twila followed with comment by summarizing that neither of these men are planning a real appeal or for the federal government to get out of health care as they should.