Thom Tillis is an ACA-repeal dead-ender, but significant elements of the GOP are moving away from that position.

Having staved off his hard-right primary challengers, Tillis will find it difficult to tack toward the center now. 

That's Hagan's opportunity. 

Ask him about the parts of the law that everyone loves, then watch him stammer.

Acknowledging there are parts worth saving is a step into the quicksand.

What would he preserve? How would he do that? Isn't that just a version of mend-it-don't-end-it?

And if he says kill it all, tee up the adds showing a nice lady who was able to start her own business despite a pre-existing condition.

Comments

[Andrew Brod]

Stammer indeed. Supporting only parts of the ACA is incoherent.

Want community rating, i.e. no pre-existing conditions? Fine, but then you need an individual mandate to prevent adverse selection and avoid a bad risk pool. And if you have an individual mandate, you need premium subsidies to keep insurance affordable for lower-income folks.

In other words, the three main elements of the ACA hang together. It's less crazy to advocate outright repeal than to single out community rating as the only part of the ACA you want to keep.

[Andrew Brod]

Thom Tillis's House hasn't voted on the bill yet, but the Senate wants to go in the other direction. Not only have they refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA, they want to cut Medicaid eligibility.

Nice.

[William Heasley]

“Ask him about the parts of the law that everyone loves, then watch him stammer.”

ACA is not a law, rather it’s legislation.

Legislation is manmade, top down edict of the few to the many. Legislation is created by the stoke of a pen and can be ended by the stroke of a pen. Law on the other hand is emergent order of the many, over centuries, that becomes what the many want as a convention.

Law would be extremely difficult to strike down. Legislation, not so much. One also has to consider ACA is merely legislation that amended prior health insurance legislation which was existing legislation, that in turn, had amended yet prior health insurance legislation as so it goes in a series of amended legislation stretching back to circa 1946.

Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volumes 1,2 and 3, F.A.Hayek, 02/15/1978, 10/15/1978 and 03/15/1981

http://www.amazon.com/Law-Legislation-Liberty-Volume-Rules/dp/0226320863/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401494446&sr=8-1&keywords=law+legislation+and+liberty+hayek

“….that everyone loves”. Ah, the "everyone fallacious debate point" as in our, we, you, me [Yawn]. The “everyone” is merely those that benefit from this aspect or that aspect. There is no “everyone”. More succinctly:

[Paraphrasing] We would all like to see government spending go down as long as it is not the government spending that affects us. We would all like to see government deficits go down as long as increased taxes fall on someone else. Most people welcome more government spending on them, few welcome more taxes. - Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History - Milton Friedman

[NitWitCharmer]

Want community rating, i.e. no pre-existing conditions? Fine, but then you need an individual mandate to prevent adverse selection and avoid a bad risk pool. And if you have an individual mandate, you need premium subsidies to keep insurance affordable for lower-income folks.

There are easier ways of saying that the ACA does not work.

[Andrew Brod]

Your reading comprehension is awesome.

[NitWitCharmer]

Your reading comprehension is awesome.

I take it, then, that you believe the ACA is not in need of being fixed?

[Andrew Brod]

I'm not saying that no fixes will be needed, but the basic mechanism I outlined, the so-called three-legged stool of the ACA, needs no fixing. It's working. And that's why it makes no sense to say we should keep community rating but discard the rest of the ACA.

[Ed Cone]

Bill, my apologies for referring to the ACA as a "law," I was relying upon the obscure definition of the word outlined by Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution of the United States ("...it shall become a law") and not the much more relevant definition you cited.

[NitWitCharmer]

Legislation is manmade, top down edict of the few to the many.

The ACA would certainly enjoy more moral authority had it passed with the support of a majority of citizens. As it is the ACA has only enjoyed majority support from the progressive "church lady" few at the top.

Top down edict, indeed.

[Andrew Brod]

If moral authority is a good thing, then by that reasoning, you must support an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10/hour. It enjoys broad support among voters, including a slim majority of support among Republicans. Even economists, long skeptics of MW laws, now largely support an increase. Aside from employers, the only identifiable group that's solidly opposed to raising the MW are a few Republican politicians at the top.

[Andrew Brod]

Having said that, the ACA has nothing to apologize for as law. It was enacted according to the rules Congress and the Constitution laid out for passing laws. People can quibble about not liking the ACA, just as others can quibble about not liking Congress' refusal to raise the minimum wage. But the ACA is no less a law for the quibbling.

[NitWitCharmer]

It was enacted according to the rules Congress and the Constitution laid out for passing laws.

That is questionable.

Not only was the original bill in which the ACA was inserted by the Senate entirely gutted and replaced name and all, but original bill was not a tax bill. And as we all know the ACA has been declared by the supremes a tax law.

Origination does not allow for tax bills to have their genesis in the Senate.

[NitWitCharmer]

Want community rating, i.e. no pre-existing conditions? Fine, but then you need an individual mandate to prevent adverse selection and avoid a bad risk pool.

Why? If no pre-existing conditions is something we want, why can we the citizens not be directly subjected to the costs of adverse selection?

Anyway, I learned a few years ago that all of this stuff was supposed to save each of us $2500. Now it's a cost?

[Andrew Brod]

No one said we can't choose to incur the costs of adverse selection. That's what we've been doing for years! But because it wasn't working, it's reasonable to adopt as a policy goal a more balanced risk pool.