Health Care In America
D. S. Mitchell
The GOP nicknamed the Affordable Care Act, “ObamaCare” and spent seven plus years condemning the program, and promising to “repeal” the entire act, and “replace” with some nebulous unspecified improvement. Remember Trump telling the country’s voters they “will have great health care. Cheaper health care. Everybody will be covered.” What the GOP Congress has offered, and Trump claims he will sign, is a bill that would gut services, slash Medicaid expansion and strangle insurance subsidies.
It has been made obvious since Trump’s inauguration that this candidate had no plan and his rhetoric was a total and complete fabrication. In the recent struggle, the repeal forces are re-energizing and narrowing its focus to eliminate at least the most unpopular mandates of the ACA, such as mandating that everyone buy insurance, and companies with 50 or more employees provide employee insurance. Those two issues, along with the rapidly rising costs, and decreasing policy options in the private marketplace deserve immediate attention.
Republicans have made hay deriding and chastising the Democrats for a less than democratic process during the drafting of the ACA (ObamaCare). Truthfully, the drafting of the ACA was an example of transparency compared to recent efforts by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to bring their repeal and replacement to resolution by passage of a new health care law.
