Us love healthcare!
by Tom Sullivan
It’s like having a Bizarro in the White House:
“Let me tell you exactly what my message is: The Republican party will soon be known as the party of health care,” the president told reporters on Capitol Hill ahead of his meeting with Senate Republicans. “You watch.”
We watched.
Then in a legal filing Monday, and over the objections of key cabinet officials, the Trump administration backed a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act with no replacement in sight:
If the Justice Department’s position prevails, it would potentially eliminate health care for millions of people and cause disruption across the U.S. health-care system — from removing no-charge preventive services for older Americans on Medicare to voiding the expansion of Medicaid in most states. A court victory would fulfill Republican promises to undo a prized domestic accomplishment of the previous administration but leave no substitute in place.
What the hell is he doing? Paul Krugman originally thought Republican objections to health care coverage was “cynical and strategic,” that they believed stoking fear of people’s fear of change might have some political advantage. Krugman has changed his mind on that:
The point is that it’s no longer possible to see any of this as part of a clever political strategy, even a nefariously cynical one. It has entered the realm of pathology instead. It’s now clear that Republicans just have a deep, unreasoning hatred of the idea that government policy may help some people get health care.
Why? The truth is that I don’t fully get it. Maybe it’s anger at the thought of anyone getting something they didn’t earn themselves, unless it’s an inheritance from daddy. Maybe it’s a sense that a lot of gratuitous suffering is or should be part of the human condition, or God’s plan, or something. I try to understand how others think, but in this case I really do find it hard.
Maybe after his months of Mueller-phobia, believing himself finally vindicated by his attorney general’s non-exoneration exoneration, the sitting president is in the mood to exact revenge on somebody. Or maybe Krugman is right. Perhaps Trumpish authoritarians simply believe they sit atop the social ladder by virtue of superior better genes. Survival of the richest. Those who can afford, do. Those who cannot, die, just as God intended.