Archives for March 23, 2017 at 10:56 pm EDT

Nate Silver: “Sometimes in a poker hand, you find yourself with no good choices. You’ve invested a lot of money in the pot. But then your opponent unexpectedly makes a large bet and you have a marginal hand. Your options — folding, calling and reraising (as a bluff) — are all money-losing plays. But you have to pick one of them, and it’s a matter of finding the least-worst outcome. It’s the situation every poker player hates the most.”

“President Trump finds himself in a similar predicament on health care, now that GOP leaders have announced they’re delaying a vote on the House GOP’s bill to repeal and replace Obamacare and seemingly have no clear plan to secure the votes for passage.”

New York Times: “Mr. Trump has told four people close to him that he regrets going along with Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s plan to push a health care overhaul before unveiling a tax cut proposal more politically palatable to Republicans.”

“He said ruefully this week that he should have done tax reform first when it became clear that the quick-hit health care victory he had hoped for was not going to materialize on Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the act’s passage.”

Meanwhile, CNN reports Trump has “increasing concerns” about how Ryan has handled this process.

President Trump warned House Republicans that he will leave Obamacare in place unless they approve legislation to repeal and replace it, The Hill reports.

Trump officials meeting with the House GOP conference said Trump is done negotiating over the legislation, which was to come up for a vote Thursday but was delayed. If the vote fails, Trump says he will move on to other priorities.

The Washington Post says the vote will be held Friday, regardless of whether they have lined up the votes.

“House leaders postponed a vote on their plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system, as they struggled to meet demands of conservative lawmakers who said they could not support the bill,” the Washington Post reports.

A House GOP conference meeting is set for 7 p.m. tonight.

Republican lawmakers leaving the White House after a meeting with President Trump “said they have not reached a deal that would allow them to support an Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill set for a vote Thursday,” The Hill reports.

“Republicans appear short of the 215 votes they’d need to win the tally, raising questions about whether GOP leaders will decide to delay the vote.”

Politico: “If Trump fails to clinch an agreement with the group, the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare will be all but dead.”

House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC):  “There are not enough votes as of 1:30 p.m. today.”

FiveThirtyEight: “Imagine a Congress and a president of the same party working on health insurance reform. They write up a piece of legislation, and it’s not popular. Within two weeks of its introduction in Congress, the bill garners just 41 percent support from the American public, and the opposition party is completely against it. People protest. People yell at lawmakers. The lawmakers pass the bill anyway, and the party and president are summarily punished in the next election: They lose a ton of seats in Congress. That was President Obama, Democrats and the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010. Minus the passing-the-bill part, that was President Bill Clinton, Democrats and ‘Hillarycare’ in 1993 and 1994 too.”

“Now imagine a bill that’s even more unpopular, and you have House Republicans’ health care legislation in 2017, the American Health Care Act. The bill is aimed at repealing and replacing parts of the ACA. It’s polling worse than the ACA and the Clinton effort, and history suggests that it could have disastrous consequences for the GOP.”

A new Quinnipiac poll finds that American voters disapprove of the Republican healthcare plan by 56% to 17%, with 26% undecided.

Even among Republicans, support is a lackluster 41% to 24%.

“The Republican plan to replace Obamacare — backed vehemently by President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan — continued to bleed support from moderate House members just hours before an expected vote,” Politico reports.

“An effort to woo conservatives hatched late Wednesday appeared to backfire with other factions in the House Republican conference, and the growing rebellion threatens to derail Trump’s guarantee that he will repeal and replace the seven-year-old health care law.”

The Hill: “GOP centrists in the House are fleeing from their party’s Obamacare repeal-and-replace legislation.”

GOP leaders can have no more than 22 defections from Republicans.

A few whip counts:

• CBS News reports that 31 GOP House members “cannot support the bill in its current form.”
• NBC News says there are 30 who are “against the bill or leaning against it.”
• Huffington Post says 29 are “extremely likely to be against” the bill.
• The Hill finds 29 who are still against the bill.
• New York Times finds 29 “no” votes.