WILL STARK'S REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN GIBBS & RENACCI LIVE TO REGRET MAY 4, 2017 AHCA "YES" VOTE?

UPDATE:  MAY 7, 2017

UPDATE

For a summary of which health care industry participants who favor/disfavor the AHCA/ACA, readers in the interest of being informed on the stakes on the topic, should read this (LINK) New York Times article on the favor/disfavor topic.

According to Ohio U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, 900,000  Ohioans might lose healthcare if the newly passed AHCA ever gets implement in the form passed on May 4th.  Moveover, Brown claims some 200,000 Ohio could lose opoid addition coverage.

Extrapolating from Brown's numbers (proportionalizing Stark's population to Ohio's total), if accurate, do these numbers transpose into:

• a little over 5,000 Stark Countians possibly losing health care coverage in general, and 
• 1,100 losing coverage for opoid addiction?

Ohio 7th District congressman and Republican Bob Gibbs representing a good part of Stark County is pictured above in the upper right hand corner in the crowd of congressmen (mostly men; only a few women) joining President Trump in a victory dance of sorts on May 4th when the U.S. House of Representatives passed 217 to 213 the American Health Care Act (AHCA) dubbed as Trumpcare by the presidents detractors.

Also voting "yes" with Gibbs and 216 others was current 16th District congressman and Republican Jim Renacci who is abandoning his seat to run for governor of Ohio.

The question is whether or not, when it comes to the 2018 elections, either will suffer a lethal political fate as a consequence of having voted for the ACHA/Trumpcare.

Here is a revisitation of a October 6, 2010 Stark County Political Report video of Renacci lambasting then-incumbent-congressman John Boccieri 16th Ohio Congressional District on the Affordable Care Act (ACA)/Obamacare which district, at that time, included all of Stark County.



The ACA/Obamacare became law on March 23, 2010 (presidential signing date) having passed the U.S. House on March 21, 2010 (219 yes, 212 no; agreeing to Senate amendment) and the U.S. Senate on December 24, 2009 (60 yes, 39 no).

In the House's March vote, Boccieri who claimed to be "sitting on the fence" (he originally voted no on a key vote on legislation) on the healthcare proposal in the lead up to the final vote, was deemed to be a critical vote in the ACA/Obamacare passage.

As the SCPR video of a Boccieri/Renacci debate shows, Renacci worked Boccieri over big time on having voted for the ACA/Obamacare.

I think that Renacci did such a masterful job on Boccieri and his support of ACA/Obamacare that his effort is a large part of the reason he defeated the incumbent congressman.

A dramatic turnaround from 2008 when Boccieri defeated Stark Countian Kirk Schuring in succeeding long time 16th District Republican congressman Ralph Regula.

In a poll taken about one year later, numbers indicate that only about 41% of voters approved of Obamacare.

A recent poll shows that perhaps as many of 61% of voting Americans support the ACA/Obamacare.

The U.S. Senate now takes up the AHCA/Trumpcare and most political analysts think that the House version will never see the light of day and that the ACA/Obamacare in some form will live on.

In fact, one conservative analyst has gone so far to say that within seven (7) years, a single payer system will become the law of America on health care.

All of which raises the question as posed above.  Will Gibbs, Renacci and other locally connected politicians (e.g. Christina Hagan who is running to succeed Renacci in the 16th congressional district) have the political ambitions dashed because of favoring the AHCA/Trumpcare?

An Akron Beacon Journal editorial already is putting Renacci on the spot in an editorial post-passage of the AHCA/Trump care.

If such a turn occurs, then Stark County will have experienced political irony in spades.