Another week, another set of failures for the new Trump administration. President Trump and Speaker Ryan control the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and, possibly, the Supreme Court. With almost complete control of the government, they put up a very weak, low-energy performance in getting their Obamacare repeal through. Jeb could’ve done better. Trump didn’t even want to put his name on the bill, despite putting his name on ties and steak! Sad!
I am gloating a little, but only because the proposed bill was completely awful. The Congressional Budget Office, whose job it is to project economic outcomes of legislation, predicted that this bill, the American Health Care Act, would knock about 24 million people off of insurance coverage and undercut Medicaid, as reported by the New York Times. While Paul Ryan desperately tried to invoke the all-knowing market as a way of explaining why people “voluntarily” dropping their healthcare coverage would work in the long run, it failed as many Republicans in the center started to back away.
What really gave Speaker Ryan a headache was the Freedom Caucus, a group of conservatives and libertarians who opposed the bill not because of the large numbers of people being uninsured, but because it didn’t go far enough in getting rid of Obamacare. They wanted it all gone; mandates and essential health benefits, including ER and maternity care, among other things. One senator even joked about his “mammogram coverage” before being ransacked on Twitter, and then promptly apologizing. There are many parts of Obamacare that people like, and many legislators got an earful at some of their home town-halls. Needless to say, the AHCA was seriously unpopular; to be specific, only 17% of voters approved. So this should be a perfect time for Donald Trump and his master negotiating skills to sweep in and make us start winning again, right?
As you’d expect from a con-man, he completely failed. In fact, he seemed to have little interest or understanding of healthcare policy at all. Wow, it’s almost like he was just pretending to be a smart, savvy businessman on TV and that doesn’t translate to the real world. Strange.
After being defeated and dropping the bill, Trump went to the press to say he never said he would “repeal and replace Obamacare”. He did. And he said he wouldn’t do it within 64 days, which he also did. Naturally, he blamed the Democrats, despite them being a minority and having virtually no relevance to the bill passing, and said it’s on them. So instead of fixing the imperfect parts of Obamacare and working with what we have, President Trump is perfectly OK with sabotaging a decent law and making people suffer, just to score political points because he’s mad that he lost. Bad (or sick) guy!
