Don't get distracted: The GOP's cruel health-care plan isn't dead yet - By Eugene Robinson
Focus, America, focus. The most urgent task right now is to make sure a stake is driven through the heart of the Republican effort to gut Medicaid and balloon the ranks of the uninsured.
I know that the Russia investigations are charging ahead, with Capitol Hill appearances by members of President Trump’s inner circle scheduled for next week. I know that Trump gave an unhinged interview to the New York Times on Wednesday, bizarrely undermining his own attorney general. I know that one of the few remaining giants in Washington, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has received a tough medical diagnosis.
There will be time to digest all of that. At present, however, health care is still the main event.
Keep in mind that this isn’t the first time the GOP’s gratuitously cruel effort to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act has looked dead. Back in March, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called off a showdown vote and glumly declared, “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.” But he managed to get a revised bill passed in May, prompting Trump to hold a sophomoric victory rally at the White House.
That bill would have caused 23 million people to lose health insurance over a decade and slashed Medicaid spending by more than $800 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The action then shifted to the Senate, which came up with legislation that would grow the numbers of uninsured by 22 million and cut Medicaid by $772 billion. Experts who tried to parse the details gave differing opinions on which version was more heartless.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-get-distracted-the-gops-cruel-health-care-plan-isnt-dead-yet/2017/07/20/17d39bb2-6d7a-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html