How the GOP Can Still Repeal Obamacare, and Why it Hasn’t Happened Yet

Despite the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare, there is still hope for market-based healthcare reform.

My number one pet peeve with politicians is the constant and blatant hypocrisy that is often exposed during the passing (or not passing) of key legislation. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 is ample proof that many politicians will do whatever it takes to get elected—or in many cases, prevent themselves from losing. What if I told you that in the 1986 Congress, Senators Al Gore, Joe Biden, Harry Reid as well as Congressman Chuck Schumer voted for the Reagan-championed Tax Reform Act that lowered the top marginal income tax rate to twenty-eight percent? Ironically, now-Senate Minority Leader Schumer recently denounced capitalism as a whole, claiming that it has “broken down” and that the “old Adam Smith idea of competition” is “gone.”

It’s somewhat amusing to see that when the economy was booming with immense GDP and job growth, Mr. Schumer thought it was valid, along with ninety-six other senators at the time, to vote in favor of capitalism. With the Democratic Party on an interminable march to the left, I assume that Mr. Schumer has now realized that he will keep his seat only if he moves left with the party, regardless of whether he truly embraces destroying the free market.

In defense of the Democrats, they are not the only ones at fault here. For years, GOP leadership railed against the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). Repeal and replace will not happen until it is politically convenient for Republicans.

Knowing that President Obama would veto their legislation, House and Senate Republicans sent a strong message to the President’s desk in 2015 by passing a bill that repealed most of the ACA. This was a smart political tactic that helped energize their base and get many of them re-elected in 2016.