Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
The House is expected to vote this afternoon on a bill that would repeal some, but not all, of Obummercare, aka the (Un)Affordable Care Act, that drove up the cost of health insurance for all productive people while allowing then-president Obama to brag about all the new people he’d gotten covered; albeit at gunpoint and with stolen money, two facts he always omitted when bragging about his namesake boondoggle.
The problem with the so-called American Care Act is that it, like Trumpcare before it, doesn’t go far enough, not even close.
“The House bill would not fully repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act, but it would kill major elements of that Democratic law. For example, the American Health Care Act would nix the requirement that most Americans purchase insurance, but it would keep in place a provision allowing younger Americans to stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26.
The Republican proposal would repeal the ACA’s tax credits, which are based on income and the cost of health insurance in their local market, and replace those with less generous tax credits based on age,” Deidre Shesgreen wrote for USA Today this morning.
Once again, I’m reminded of my cat-box meme. 
What the overflowing cat-box that is Obummercare needs isn’t a subtle rearranging of the filth it contains but for someone to come along with a big slotted scoop and clean all that shit out. All of it, then throw out the litter, power-wash the inside of the box and start over fresh.
Of course then, that would mean the government would take itself out of massive portion of our lives, health care, and a big part of the economy, the health care industry, and that simply is not what an oligarchy does.
For their part, some Republicans – and of course all democrats – pandered to their constituents by complaining that the law doesn’t do enough for those with pre-existing conditions. Instead of taking steps to remove government regulation from the health care industry in an effort to bring down costs and make the treatment of all conditions more affordable for patients and providers, the GOP compromise instead was to steal an additional $8 billion from the productive and set it aside for those with pre-existing conditions to fill out a pile of paperwork and hope to get at.
Politics is a disgusting sport, however, and that simple tweak, another $8B pilfered, was enough to win over two key GOP holdouts and secure their vote. With Fred Upton of Michigan and Billy Long of Missouri now pledging to vote “yes,” the House vote is still expected to be very close, but passage looks likely as of this writing. In the Senate, the GOP majority is even slimmer, so the bill’s passage there is far from assured.
“’Its chances for survival in the Senate are small,’ said the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, on Wednesday,” USA Today reported.
So, for those keeping score at home, the democrats are more than happy to let stand a law that is very simply economically unsustainable because Obummercare represents the pinnacle of democratic legislative achievement since the disastrous 1994 Clinton Crime Bill was passed. That patients all around the country are being squeezed to death by Obummercare’s mandated skyrocketing premiums and dwindling choices (some markets only being left with one, terrible, very expensive option on the so-called “exchange”) doesn’t matter to political elites like Chucky Schumer, Hillary Clinton or Obama – it’s the message about the law that they can sell to the peasants that matters. And, since the Left controls the media, the message about Obummercare we’ve been given is that it’s saintly and only the devil would mess with it – even though Bill Clinton accidentally told the truth about Obummercare at a campaign stop in Michigan last year.
The Republicans have their own base to fire up and since Trump’s first 100 days have been pretty much a flop, they’re desperate to show the peasants that they can get stuff done. What kind of stuff? Doesn’t matter, get it done; half-assed or not, get it done. The first effort, Trumpcare, smelled a lot of “hurry up and get it done,” which is why the law was materially almost no different than Obummercare. After the closest-thing-to-useful-in-all-of-Congress, the “House Freedom Caucus,” threw cold water on that effort, the GOP had to go back and come up with something a little better. And so, they did – the American Care Act is a little better than Trumpcare, which was a little better than Obummercare.
Given Obummercare’s deleterious effect on the economy and the lives of hard-working, productive Americans, nothing “a little better” is going to do a damn thing, which is the point. Government only exists to serve its own interests, never ours. One would have thought we as a nation would have figured this out years ago, 47 of them to be exact. Sadly, no.
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