Observe this arrogant puss and his nose in the air, his serious and stern act, how ridiculous! What a narcissistic phony. He thinks he is Mussolini. A congenital liar.
Republicans campaigned against ObamaCare and now are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy to prove that it is dying.
The current Republican effort to stuff a horrendous new health care bill down the throats of the American public without losing political capital depends to a large degree on convincing voters that it is the only alternative to the failure of ObamaCare.
Even President Trump today in a meeting with Republican Senators called the current House version of the American Healthcare Act “mean,” and urged them to be more generous despite calling it “incredibly well-crafted” just two weeks ago.
The Republicans’[ only hope is to cripple Obamacare so badly that anything they pass will look like a lifeline. That is why President Trump and the Republican-dominated Congress have underfunded Obamacare and threatened to disrupt its functions. They have succeeded in making many skittish insurance companies afraid to keep it going on the same terms as in the past.
Unfortunately, so far their diabolical plot is working. That makes Republican backers of Trumpcare giddy, even as it angers and disgusts many Americans.
In recent days, large insurers including Anthem Blue Cross have announced plans to stop offering Obamacare in Ohio, North Carolina, and other states.
“Last week,” reports The Hill, “Anthem announced it would pull out of the Ohio marketplace next year. The insurer cited a ‘volatile’ individual market as well as the ‘lack of certainty of funding for cost sharing reduction subsidies…an increasing lack of overall predictability.”
In some cases where insurers will continue to participate in federally created insurance exchanges, they are raising rates higher than usual because of the uncertainty in the market.
“In North Carolina,” The Hill reports, “Blue Cross Blue Shield – the state’s largest insurer – requested a nearly 23 percent premium increase for next year, specifically citing the uncertainty over whether federal cost-sharing reduction subsidies will continue.”
Trump has used the Obamacare subsidies that the federal government provides to ensure even those with low wages can afford to be insured as a pawn in the Republican efforts to destroy Obamacare, even though the plan passed in 2009 – after a rough start – has been working and earning high approval ratings in public opinion surveys.
During tense negotiations over extending the federal debt ceiling this past April, Trump dangled the subsidies crucial to the success of ObamaCare as a carrot to tempt Democrats into voting with Republicans to avoid a government shutdown.
That earned this cynical President headlines about how he was using the sick and needy as hostages to force his opponents into voting as he wishes.
Since then Trump has slowly but steadily eroded or eliminated those payments – by delaying or refusing to make payments – and Obamacare is being de-stabilized, exactly what the Republicans want.
Now that insurers are running away, the Republicans see it as a victory they can use to claim Obamacare was failing all along.
“The departure of insurers from Obamacare is emboldening Republicans,” The Hill reports, “helping them make the case to the public and each other that the time has come to repeal the law.”
The negative news about ObamaCare has strengthened the Republicans case that a replacement is needed, but the version passed by the House in May, and the Senate’s bill, according to rumors, face stiff opposition from many Republicans (conservatives and moderates differ on numerous aspects) and almost all Democrats.
Even Tom Miller, a fellow at the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute, told The Hill that Republicans need a better bill and better “messaging.”
“Unlike being an opposition party,” said Miller, “when you are part of the problem yourself, you have to indicate why it’s going to get better.”
Public opinion polls indicate a lot of Americans have figured out that the Republicans are undermining ObamaCare while offering a weak alternative that will cover a lot fewer people, cost more and offer less.
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in May reported that 63 percent of those polled recognized Trump and the Republicans are responsible for problems with ObamaCare now and in the future.
Half of the Republicans polled said they blame Trump and the Republicans in Congress for the problems with the health care law. That is a major change from April when only 34 percent of Republicans blamed Trump.
“As Republicans are seen as having the power to control the successes or failings of the ACA (ObamaCare), even members of their own party are placing responsibility on them for making it work,” Ashley Kirzinger, a Kaiser analyst said, according to The Hill. “It’s the Pottery Barn question – you break it, you buy it.”
How all of this will play in the 2018 election cycle is clearly very much on the minds of the Republicans in the Senate who are crafting the new legislation without any transparency or effort to be inclusive, despite claims by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to the opposite.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer countered that Republicans are “ashamed” of the bill they are writing to replace ObamaCare.
McConnell sounds even shadier when he explains why a bill that impacts the health of all Americans and will cost millions their health insurance requires no public comment.
“There’ve been gazillions of hearings on this subject,” claims McConnell, “when they (Democrats) were in the majority when we were in the majority. We understand the issue pretty well, and now were working on coming up with a solution.”
You could sense Schumer’s eyes were rolling when he responded to that: “No hearings, no change to make amendments? I take total issue with it. I have never seen such legislative malpractice, by any leader, as this.”
The irony was not lost on Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado that when ObamaCare was passed eight years ago, McConnell had advocated greater transparency – even after a year of hearings and 25 hours of debate on the Senate floor.
“Above all,” Bennet quoted McConnnell at the time, “the American people…are tired of a process that shuts them out. They are tired of giant bills negotiated in secret, then jammed through on a party line vote in the middle of the night.”
“If the process we had wasn’t enough,” adds Bennet, “what they’re giving is really giving the back of their hand to the American people.”
Trump and McConnell both are masters of looking the American people in the eye and lying about whatever it is they want to promote, push or pass at that moment, conveniently forgetting what they said when the shoe was on the Democratic foot.
We can only hope the suffering, higher costs and increased illness and death that TrumpCare will cause will be a wake-up call to American voters in 2018 and beyond.
It is time for the lies to stop and America to get back on the road to wellness, prosperity, and reality, and TrumpCare is never going to be the right answer.
