One way to determine if a political party cares about people like you is to see if they have any interest in whether you have access to quality, affordable health care. If they’re indifferent to whether you live or die, that’s a good indicator that they’re not on your side. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a member of the Republican Party, and he could not be more clear that he has no interest in health care as a topic other than for its potential as a political weapon against the Democrats.
This week began with news that Trump’s Justice Department had filed a legal brief arguing that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. But if anyone thought that meant that twenty million or more people were newly at risk of losing coverage, Trump was ready at the Twitter machine to reassure them.
The Republican Party will become “The Party of Healthcare!”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 26, 2019
The rest of the week has been made up of congressional Republicans scurrying around trying to figure out how they’re supposed to fulfill the promise that they’ll become “The Party of Healthcare” after a judge presumably strikes down all the provisions in Obamacare that make it work.
When the Republicans were in the majority in both houses of Congress, they tried to keep their promise to repeal Obamacare without eliminating coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, but they could not accomplish that task because it’s basically impossible. They’re still unwilling to threaten coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, which means that they have a new problem. They now need Trump to lose in court or they’ll have to find a way to mandate that healthy people buy health insurance so that insurance companies can hope to afford to cover people with cancer, diabetes and other unprofitable health conditions.
Mitch McConnell wants absolutely no part of this.
Mitch McConnell has no intention of leading President Donald Trump’s campaign to transform the GOP into the “party of health care.”
“I look forward to seeing what the president is proposing and what he can work out with the speaker,” McConnell said in a brief interview Thursday, adding, “I am focusing on stopping the ‘Democrats’ Medicare for none’ scheme.”
…Now in divided government, with the Senate majority up for grabs next year and McConnell himself running for reelection, another divisive debate over health care is the last thing McConnell needs. But that’s exactly where Trump is taking Republicans after his administration endorsed a wholesale obliteration of the law in the courts earlier this week.
So the Kentucky Republican and his members are putting the onus on the president to figure out the next steps.
There are some senators who have shown some willingness to take up the president’s challenge and work on a Republican health care bill (I’ve seen Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and John Barrasso of Wyoming mentioned) but McConnell is not going to task his committee chairs with doing any serious work on this between now and next November. He’ll sit back and let the White House work out something with Nancy Pelosi.
While the GOP leader has endorsed efforts to protect pre-existing conditions, McConnell told his caucus on Wednesday he will stick to a message of asking the administration for a plan and focusing on making Democratic measures unpopular, according to attendees.
The Republicans have already proven that they have no answers on health care. They love scaring people who have health coverage that they like by telling them that the Democrats will cause them to lose it or have to pay substantially more for less quality and longer waits. What they aren’t willing to do is to go back to the pre-Obamacare days when people could not buy health coverage at any price because they had a pre-existing conditions. And since they won’t contemplate taking that step, they’re now appalled that Trump has taken it by trying to get the law thrown off the books by the courts.
If McConnell actually cared about your health care, he wouldn’t have been satisfied with the old status quo and he wouldn’t be furious that the president wants him to legislate a new comprehensive national scheme. He doesn’t want to improve access, lower cost, or do anything other than talk about the Democrats’ radical proposals. And he’s not alone:
“The president’s entitled to his opinions, so I don’t begrudge him that,” [Senate Majority Whip, John] Cornyn said. “But what they need to do now is tell us what their plans are.”
In fact, the broader Republican establishment is just baffled by the idea that the president would take away millions of people’s access to health care and then ask them to fix the problem.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday found 45 percent of Americans opposing Medicare for All and 43 percent backing the proposal.
“That’s the rhetoric that really scares a lot of voters – I would think a lot of independent voters, a lot of suburban voters, voters that Dems did really well with last time,” Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, said.
While Republicans had hoped to seize on public unease with such sweeping reforms, Heye said that the Trump administration’s legal shift on the ACA could complicate that effort by putting the onus on Republicans to stake out their own position on health care.
“It’s why the announcement from the White House was surprising,” said Heye, who also served as an aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). “If your opponent is running off a cliff, it’s best to stay out of their way.”
But this all stems for the decision to demonize the Affordable Care Act when it was a middle course, moderate reform designed to win bipartisan support and avoid the more radical changes some Democrats are now pushing on the campaign trail. Trump is trying to keep his promise to kill Obamacare and it turns out the Republicans are apoplectic about it.
The Republican Party does not care about you or your health or the health of your family and loved ones. They never have, and I doubt they ever will.
. . . “___r health” is already covered by that comprehensive general statement.
Hard not to remind Rep’s, ‘be careful what you wish for’. Nine years they have chosen to build towards this inevitability. McConnell may think he can now turn his back on coming up with a plan by calling on Trump’s inner circle to come up with some magical solution, but that too will only make the whole party look like fools.
People will die, hospitals and clinics will file for bankruptcy, the working population will see its health downgraded and we’ll go back to families filing for bankruptcy when they experience a health crisis.
Music playing in the background seems to building to a mega crescendo here where all Trump’s apples are going to fall to the ground simultaneously.
. . . for decades already to everyone in possession of functional fool-recognition capability.
RE:
Nah, not if the *BRP has the votes to legislate a “fix” to eliminate that option and keep health-crisis victims indentured ’til Death do them release.
*Banana Republican Party, successor to “GOP” (which is “O” and a “P”, but hasn’t been “G” for a very long time)
With Trump, it’s personal. Everything Obama did must be destroyed, cost be damned. That goes double for anything good.
As for coming up with a replacement, I doubt he understands that Obamacare is basically Romneycare, which was the Republican health care plan. What would the Republicans come up with that would actually help the non-wealthy while still passing both chambers of Congress that would be significantly different? I have my doubts they can.
“In fact, the broader Republican establishment is just baffled by the idea that the president would take away millions of people’s access to health care and then ask them to fix the problem.”
—————–
President Trump did something stupid and they are all Shocked, absolutely blindsided once and again. Is there gambling going on in here?
Republicans are speechless of course, again. They’re sure the President has a plan, let’s all be patient and see what it is, he’s the President after all. Anyway, those Democrats won’t let Trump do anything good for America.
It’s been the Emperor’s new clothes every day, ever since he came down that escalator and latched himself onto the GOP like a brain-sucking parasite.
. . . afford to spare even back then.
“…Obamacare is basically Romneycare, which was the Republican health care plan.”
I wouldn’t classify Obamacare as basically Romneycare. Rhetoric is not reality. There are many differences between the two Laws, and almost all show the ACA as more progressive. Portions of the ACA replaced Romneycare policies in Massachusetts.
Romneycare is a law which was passed by a Democratic Party-controlled Legislature, which then-Governor Romney signed. It was significantly different from the Heritage Foundation plan and any other iterations of health reform offered by Republicans in the ’90’s and 00’s.
Yes, both the ACA and the earlier health care reform Law in Massachusetts are to the right of the health care reform Law proposed by President Clinton in 1993, an effort co-led by Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, the ACA is the most progressive and comprehensive health care reform Law in the history of our nation.
. . . “Justice” John “Balls-‘n-Strikes” [liar!] Roberts went all judicial-activist on it by inventing a “legal” pretext to gut the Medicaid-expansion provision, its most “progressive” element.
Just more meaningless blather out of the greasy phone and ADDled mind of President Imbecile. As we’ve seen literally hundreds of times already, tomorrow it’ll be some new (equally absurd) tweet, all for the delectation of fools and the mindless scurrying of the useless media, acting as though the endless nonsensical tweets by this abusive ignorant moron are consequential “news”.
And if one hasn’t figured out by now that the Repubs are the Party of Bad Faith, they never will. “The Party of Healthcare”, eh? As a Repub slogan it couldn’t be any more ridiculous. But our National Trumpalist stooges and MAGA-ites will ingest every form of sewage imaginable.
Ultimately the question always boils down to just how stupid are the American people? And can their intelligence actually be insulted?
Policy wise, the Republicans painted themselves into a corner by opposing the ACA, whose origins was essentially their response to “Hillarycare” during the Clinton years.
What could they propose that would actually improve health care that would be to the right of the ACA? I doubt there is much of anything that would pass the laugh test.
Short term politically, it was brilliant. They turned the ACA into a boogeyman and then demonized the hell out of it as free stuff for “those people”. But sure enough, it’s now covering a hell of a lot of independents and Republicans as well, so getting their radical extremists they have placed in the courts to kill it and then pretending like their party had nothing to do with its demise is probably the only thing they got at the moment.
Repeal Obamacare root and branch then simply repass it that very day but call it Trump care. There problem solved.
Also I do not think Obamacare can be described accurately as a middle way. It was the farthest right plan that could concievably accomplish the goals set out for healthcare.
This claim that the ACA was some right wing plan ignores, among many other things, the Medicaid eligibility expansion in the Law. As originally passed, the expansions were mandatory for all States. It was Chief Justice Roberts who made the expansions optional in his authoring of the Sebelius decision.
Additionally, the ACA’s many regulations of health care providers and the outlawing of gender-based health insurance rating and disqualification due to pre-existing conditions are far, far from right wing. And we haven’t even touched on the highly progressive tax hikes and tax subsidies in the Law.
No, it’s just factually incorrect to characterize the ACA in whole as any form of far right. What it is, in the end, is a Law which was as far left as it could be while getting the votes of the most conservative Senators in the Democratic Caucus from July 7th to August 25th, 2009 and September 25th, 2009 to February 4th, 2010.
I did not characterize it as a far right plan. I said it was the most right wing plan that could still actually address the stated goals of improving access to healthcare.
We also have no idea if it was the farthest left plan that could get the most votes in the Senate euring that period.
The Medicaid eligibility expansions and the Federal government’s near full financing of the costs of those expansions to the States was a very left wing way to provide health care access. More Americans have gained health insurance since 2013 through Medicaid than through private insurance, and if the Sebelius SCOTUS decision had not made it possible for States to reject Medicaid expansions, the balance would have been even more strongly tilted towards the public insurance provisions of the ACA over private insurance.
It’s also pretty left wing to finance the prorated-by-income tax subsidies to purchase private insurance for Americans with middle incomes with very progressive taxes on those with higher incomes. It’s also pretty left wing to regulate insurers and providers the ways the ACA does.
We’ve made our cases. I’m fine with agreeing to disagree.
There were many who were pushing for the ACA to be more progressive when it was moving through the Senate. There were many news reports in 2009-10 which showed Senators Nelson, Lieberman and others unwilling to support aspects of the version of the ACA passed by the House, as well as improvements in the Law which were offered during discussions in the Senate.
I’m struck in the Q Univ poll by the figure opposed to Medicare for all: 45%.
I’m idly curious about what the overlap is with the 35%-40% fascist base.
Ron Johnson is an ideologically rigid dolt, and John Barrasso is the sort of right wing physician who demagogued against good and popular health care policy in the ’50’s and ’60’s before the successful passage of Medicare and Medicaid.
If those two are going to be allowed to take leadership as the “idea people” on health care, God help us. They’re simultaneously outrageous liars and poor thinkers on health care policy.
Russ Feingold should have campaigned more in Wisconsin. This didn’t neet to happen.
Right?
In 2017, Feingold declared that the Republican Party platform is aligned with white supremacy. The Good People of Wisconsin (you know which ones) could tell that Feingold was insensitive to their economic anxiety during the previous year’s Senate campaign. Thank Baby Jesus the voters made the right decision in 2016.
Make Wisconsin Great Again By Allowing Whites To Say What They Really Think About Milwaukee Residents!