If the GOP has its cruel and evil way, tens of millions of Americans will suffer. Eighty percent of Americans agree that the Trumpcare bill is a careless tribute by the GOP to trump's hatred of Barack Obama. It should fail. It has nothing to do with improving health care. It is about enabling the president to crow about getting a bill passed.
The real question
Does the GOP want to be humiliated now or later? With America dead set against Trump's chicanery, the GOP knows it faces a possible rout at the polls.
We cannot imagine what will happen when Medicaid begins to disintegrate and premiums hit poor people with figures like $16,000 for a one-year policy.
The GOP should probably face humiliation now for having participated in this grim charade. Later will be worse.
Ask yourself
Does a governing party typically do legislation without open hearings and debate? If you are the Senate GOP doing health care, that's exactly what you do. The bill has been under wraps, secret, and no doubt subject to disagreements and even expressions of shame.
Does a governing party do legislation without expert testimony? Don't expect expert anything from this amazing effort.
Take notes on those GOP health care promises https://t.co/RGLwWyJGkW #axiosvitals
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) June 12, 2017
A catalog of crimes against health
Today's dispatches from the health care front amount to a list of offenses against everything that is good and decent.
Heed. Having nothing better to do, the House is trying to make health dependent on our immigration status. Delightful. Presumably, if you are Islamic you are in danger of no treatment. This will please the Trump base, what is left of it.
Endangered Medicaid
The full impact of the GOP's clearly coming Medicaid cuts will make an impression now but they will hit hardest in 2020, just in time for the election.
We should be making Medicaid universal. The GOP wants to be done with it.
Try this. Insurance companies will be able to say what they will cover and what not. Axios points out that Obamacare got hammered for overpromising. The GOP will present a defective and cruel bill as a cornucopia of fine things Overpromising again. But the electorate will know the truth.
We will own experience the hell the Republicans want to create.
The good news
It would be wonderful if the entire misguided effort would perish before coming to a vote. But the GOP is being pressured by Trump to perform and it will certainly look bad if they fail to pass anything but the disastrous Gorsuch appointment,
But the approach they have taken, the secrecy and the speed, along with a probable failing grade from the Congressional Budget Office, may be a guarantee that in the end, we will have less health care hurt than we would certainly get if the measure passed.
