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Originally Posted by Max Cut
Was the problem with AHCA that it was too brutal or not brutal enough? What would a passable version of AHCA looked like?
Both. While the narrative going around is that the Freedom Caucus killed it, by my count it was only 15 Freedom Caucus members that were against it out of 35-40 total Republicans being against it. Republicans could afford about 20 defections, but no more than 22. Republicans tried to change the bill to make it far more cruel at the last minute to please the Freedom Caucus, but in doing so they risked (and likely lost a few votes from) the so-called "moderate" conservatives--people who didn't want to vote to take away Medicaid from a huge portion of their constituencies, putting their seats into peril in 2018.
That's one of the great difficulties of Ryan's job. Anything remotely reasonable is going to piss off the Freedom Caucus, and anything that is extreme enough for the Freedom Caucus is going to have problems with the more human members of the Republican House and Senate. It's going to be very tough going getting anything through especially since Trump is so unpopular and Democrats feel no political pressure to work with him at all.