We won't know what Republicans are going to do about healthcare until they actually start advancing something, but we have another reason to believe they may not do anything anytime soon.
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the chairman of the Senate committee on health, has quietly admitted that the cost-sharing mechanisms of Obamacare will have to remain in place for some time because they're running out of time to replace them.
“Republicans are going to have to do some things that we may not normally do like cost-sharing or reinsurance,” Alexander said, referring to two Obamacare policies designed to help reduce the cost of healthcare.
“We may not like those things, but we may have to do those things for the next two-to-three years to make sure people can buy insurance.”
Health insurers will begin filing their paperwork for fiscal 2018 next month, leaving very little time for the GOP to decide what the hell they're going to do.
The House of Representatives will only be in session for three days next week and will be in recess for the entire fourth week of the month. And life is about to become much more complicated for Congress as the continuing resolution that funds the federal government will expire in April.
Even though Republicans have decided they're not even going to attempt to go through the appropriations process, they still don't seem to have time to do everything they want to do. Actually, they don't seem to even know what they want to do.
Our best hope for Obamacare's survival remains Republican incompetence.