WASHINGTON ― Reporters love to call new legislative proposals “dead on arrival.” It sounds dramatic, like a cop show. The Clintons’ health care plan was “dead on arrival.” Every Social Security reform since the 1980s has been “dead on arrival.” Barack Obama’s Asian trade deal was “dead on arrival.”Well, the new Obamacare “repeal and replace” plan, assembled by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, isn’t “dead on arrival.”Something has to be alive before it can be declared dead. But if we go with the idea that President Donald Trump and his circle know what they’re doing, then this is meant to be a Zombie Plan. There is a perhaps fatal flaw in such a strategy: the new proposal’s almost total disconnect from substantive and political reality. Substantively, it isn’t really a proposal because even Price admitted that he has no idea what it will cost.

Source: Huffington Post March 08, 2017 02:26 UTC