The Trump administration has told a federal appeals court it wants the entire Affordable Care Act struck down, an outcome that could leave millions uninsured and re-ignite a winning political issue for Democrats.Health insurance was a big issue in the last election, with oodles of Republicans running away from full repeal of Obamacare. They were proclaiming that they really didn't want to take away people's health insurance, that they wanted to ensure that people who have pre-existing conditions kept their coverage.
The administration, in a terse filing Monday with the court in New Orleans, said it agrees that former President Barack Obama’s health care law should be declared unconstitutional after Congress repealed one part of it — unpopular fines on people who remain uninsured.
Trump has now thrown high-octane gasoline on those embers. A few days after Trump was handed his big political win by Bob Mueller, now Trump has ensured that nobody is going to care about that. The news stories will be how Trump is trying to ensure that tens of millions of people lose their health insurance. "Repeal and Replace" has been supplanted by "Overturn and Fuck You."
"Donald Trump Wants to Take Away Your Health Insurance" will be the banner campaign ad if this case isn't decided by next year, or if Obamacare is upheld.
"Donald Trump Took Away Your Health Insurance" will be the main campaign ad if Obamacare is stricken down. Every Republican running for federal office will be tarred with that brush.
And you can be sure that every one of those birds knows that.
4 comments:
Maybe he cares more about that than getting re-elected. He promised to try when running. In fact, that was a plank of his platform. THe R's didn't really make an attempt.
I think you're wrong, B. Being defeated in a re-election bid would mark Trump as a loser. If there is any label that Trump despises more than "loser", I don't know what it is.
I don't understand what is going on but I could not help but notice my Ca health coverage got canceled when my lady and I got remarried at my 65th birthday.
We both live on Social Security and we both got canceled after we got married?
It's not like either of us "has" anything, but our combined poverty income is too much for health help?
It's CA, not Donnie exactly, but WTF?
w3ki
I don't know if they are thinking about this or not, but this whole attempt (that I owe my eyesight to, by the way) at the Republican/Romneycare mandate, regulation and subsidies approach, that actually does work in a few other countries where they don't try to sabotage it, but is complicated and leaves holes in the "universal" part of universal coverage, while gaining popularity, is making the idea of letting everyone who wants to buy into Medicare look really good to a lot of people.
I have Medicare because I'm disabled, and I can tell you that you would want it if you could get it.
And if we let people buy into it, it doesn't disrupt the millions and millions of folks who get their coverage through their employers, which makes it politically feasible, all the more so because of all the fighting and uncertainty that has accompanied the decade of the ACA we have had.
And the "buy in" part answers part of the question of "how do we pay for it?" without the kind of major tax increase that would be needed to pay for a full-scale switchover to single payer all at once.
The ACA was a major step in the right direction, was the only politically feasible system available at the time, and brought coverage to tens of millions of people who lacked it before.
And as I said, I owe my eyesight to it.
But it's complicated, and as such, easily assailable by those in our political arena who don't want everyone to be covered, so perhaps it's not the best fit for us at the present time.
The controversy handed the house to the Republicans in 2010, and now that we have seen what being covered is like for a while, may usher in our own version of single payer soon, so I hope they don't tear it down as we already have their attempts to do so to campaign on without the added misery the removal of it would cause.
-Doug in Oakland
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