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This part isn't totally surprising however Republicans have been fighting amongst themselves about what to do regarding the Affordable Care Act. Portman proved that the GOP is still fixated on repealing the landmark health care law while some Republicans, like U.S. Senate candidate, Rep. Bill Cassidy (R. LA), are focusing on how to undermine the ACA:If Republicans take control of the Senate in 2014, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) said he suspected the new majority would hold a repeal vote on Obamacare early."I don't know what's going to happen specifically on votes on Obamacare," Portman said Thursday at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. "I suspect we will vote to repeal early, to put on record the fact that we Republicans think it was a bad policy and we think it's hurting our constituents. And we think it's going down, not up. We think people should be able to keep the insurance that they had."
Portman added that he would support such a vote and supports repeal.
"But I think we ought to also spend more time on the replacement side of that and the Republican approach has never been just repeal it's also always been 'lets get rid of this but lets replace it with something that does deal with the very real problem in our health care system and that is increased costs and the lack of coverage," Portman said.
Asked if that meant Portman thought a Republican Senate majority should develop its own healthcare reform plan, the senator from Ohio said "I think we should. I think we should." - TPM, 9/11/14
Now of course the continuous waste of time to take away health insurance to millions of Americans all depends if the GOP wins the Senate which even Portman isn't fully convinced his party has this in the bag:Cassidy's bill would allow insurers to keep selling non-Obamacare-compliant plans to employers through 2019, which would largely affect small employers with 50 or fewer employees. The Obama administration has already given the same option to those in the individual market through 2016, after the outcry over the "keep your health plan" controversy last fall.But the House GOP's latest bill would significantly broaden that so-called "fix" and extend it through the end of the decade. The small-business market that would be affected accounts for at a minimum 17 percent of the covered workers in the United States, or roughly 26 million people. That market is a major focus of Obamacare, remade under its insurance reforms and targeted by the insurance exchanges that opened last year.
Larry Levitt, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told TPM that the Cassidy bill -- if it hypothetically became law -- would be "quite disruptive" to the small-business market. The Congressional Budget Office had previously estimated that those enrolling in non-compliant plans in the individual market would be negligible in 2016 after the Obama administration announced its "fix." But in evaluating Cassidy's bill, CBO estimated that now 2 million people would be enrolled in non-compliant plans in the small-employer market in 2016 -- with that number set to increase in the following years.
"The idea that non-compliant plans could be sold as new coverage to employers would be quite disruptive to the small business insurance market under the ACA," Levitt said, "since those plans could siphon off younger and healthy groups while avoiding those who have an employee with a pre-existing condition." - TPM, 9/10/14
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The races he did mention that he thinks the GOP can win and the NRSC can win are North Carolina, Michigan, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Well I say we prove Portman wrong by donating and getting involved with Senators Kay Hagan (D. NC), Mary Landrieu (D. LA) and Mark Pryor's (D. AR) campaigns and Rep. Gary Peters' (D. MI). Alison Lundergan Grimes' (D. KY) and Greg Orman's (I. KS) U.S. Senate campaigns:Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), a vice chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said right now control of the Senate is "too close to call.""I think 50 days is a lifetime in politics so things could change in terms of these Senate races," Portman said during a Christian Science Monitor Breakfast on Thursday. "I think it's too close to call."
Portman ticked off West Virginia, Montana, and South Dakota as races that he felt Republicans are doing well. The Republican candidates in those states are all leading their Democratic opponents.
But, Portman said, there over a half dozen Senate races where it's just too close to call. RealClearPolitics lists ten Senate races as tossup. He added that he felt comfortable about the Kentucky Senate race, where most recent polls show Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) barely leading Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes. He said he felt the same about Kansas, where Greg Orman has recently risen as a threat to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS). - TPM, 9/11/14
