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Republicans Cant Defend Trumpcare on the Merits
So theyre not even trying.
By Jamelle Bouie
Over the past two years, Donald Trump has made clear, repeated promises to protect health insurance for those who have it and to expand it to those who dont. Im not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and Im not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid, he said in May 2015 shortly before entering the race for the White House. Fast-forward to the presidential transition, and he made a similar promise in an interview with the Washington Post, pledging a health care plan that would feature insurance for everybody with much lower deductibles and help for those who cant afford care on the private market: There was a philosophy in some circles that if you cant pay for it, you dont get it. Thats not going to happen with us.
Except now that the time has come for an actual plan, it is happening. The Congressional Budget Offices score of the American Health Care Act isnt infallible, but its analysis is in line with other estimates. That analysis shows that Trumpcare will slash coverage for millions of Americans and force millions more to choose between basic necessities: health care or rent, medicine or food. What Americans get in return is a massive tax cut, to the tune of $600 billion, with the wealthiest 0.1 percent of taxpayers seeing the most dramatic benefits.
No politician who wants to stay in office would defend this bill on its merits. Which means its advocateswell-aware of its dire outcomes for low- and moderate-income peoplehave to obfuscate. On Tuesday, Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, took a different approach, blasting the CBO as inaccurate. I dont believe the facts are correct, Mulvaney said on MSNBCs Morning Joe. Im not just saying that because it looks bad for my political position. Im say that based upon a track record of the CBO being wrong before and we believe the CBO is wrong now. (An analysis of CBO forecasts on the Affordable Care Act found that they were reasonably accurate. The CBO is itself a nonpartisan office.)
Mulvaney choice to dispute the math pales in comparison with House Speaker Paul Ryans approach: deny that the report says what it says. This report confirms that the American Health Care Act will lower premiums and improve access to quality, affordable care, said Ryan in a statement released on Monday. CBO also finds that this legislation will provide massive tax relief, dramatically reduce the deficit, and make the most fundamental entitlement reform in more than a generation. His colleague, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, took a similar tack. This report by the CBO confirms that this first phase of health reform, the American Health Care Act, uses conservative and free-market principles that will empower Americans with access, choice, and affordability.
SNIP - much more.
A few zingers from further on -
To say that the CBO report shows that the AHCA will improve access or empower Americans is to brutalize the English language.
Instead of defending the bill on its merits, Ryan and Republican leaders have taken to vaguely proclaiming that it is offering freedom and choice to consumers.
One cant reduce freedom to choice when those choices are bounded and circumscribed by income. A family that cant afford health insurance hasnt chosen to go without it; a person who lacks options for decent housing isnt exercising his freedom when he is forced into a slum.
Warpy
(111,123 posts)They really thought the ACA would be so glitch ridden that people would be desperate to get rid of it before those glitches could be fixed, and their party was in control for those two years so those glitches couldn't be fixed.
I imagine most of them are truly astonished that the plan has worked as well as it does.
That hasn't stopped them, of course. They'll have to do this as "We're going to ram this down your throats because we can" and hope that a Democratic Congress that succeeds them won't be able to override a Fat Man veto to get rid of the damage.
They don't care how many of us they hurt, just so they can give their real bosses some paper profits they don't need.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,106 posts)CBO scored the Ryan nightmare, but not HR 1275?
Are people confusing the two?
Is a bait and switch happening?