After Republicans killed the Clinton Health Care Plan during the 90's...
They were fully content to do nothing, leaving millions of Americans vulnerable and unable to afford treatment for dire illnesses. Republicans controlled the White House (and most of Congress also) from 2000 to 2008. Massive tax cuts to the rich was their primary domestic agenda. Bush nudged the ball forward a few inches with his Plan D Prescription Drug plan; the one with the huge Doughnut hole that it took Obamacare to fill, and that forbid the U.S. government from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices. But Bush also tried (and failed) to privatize Social Security.
Before Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act under Obama, the Republican Party was content with tens of million of Americans being uninsured. The were content with ever increasing numbers of Americans being denied coverage due to a list of "preexisting conditions" that magically just kept growing. Republicans didn't mind annual and life time caps on insurance payouts to those unfortunate enough to develop a serious and costly illness, even if those unfortunate individuals had regularly paid their monthly insurance premiums for decades prior. The only reason why they even acknowledge problems with the way they were comfortable having health care denied for tens of millions of Americans for decades, is because tens of millions of Americans now understand that it doesn't have to be that way. Because now, thanks to Democrats, it's no longer quite that grim.
For the seven years that followed passage of the Affordable Care Act Republicans turned over every stone in their effort to roll back the new protections that all consumers gained under Obamacare, and the ability of tens of millions more to finally be able to afford health insurance that actually paid for things like hospitalization. But in all that time they couldn't find it in them to agree on an actual alternative plan to replace Obamacare with that wouldn't kick 20 million plus people off the insurance market, or guarantee that those still insured would receive the treatments that they needed when they needed them.
A Leopard doesn't change its spots - they are simply being Republicans. Same as it ever was. They are the party that busies itself on shredding safety nets rather than designing them. If it were up to Republicans there never would have been Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid in the first place. Their ideology and their allegiances allow them to look right through the suffering of tens of millions of Americans while they plot ways to make life sweeter for their friends in the Oligarchy, by expanding the suffering of ordinary Americans.
Republicans have always been the Party of special attention to the few and utter neglect of the many. Deaths among the latter are an acceptable price to pay for prosperity of the former. Republicans had 17 years from when the took over the White House in 2000 until now to come up with a humane and workable health care plan for America. It simply wasn't a priority for them. It never is. It never has been. It never will be. Over a fifth of Americas children live in literal poverty. Children. But th Republican priority remains tax cuts for the rich and well connected. Republicans find wide spread death to be an acceptable cost of business if it allows them to lower the costs of doing business, and thus feeding the bottom line rather than the hungry.
Expecting Republicans to provide constructive leadership regarding health care now, for the poor and the struggling middle class, is like expecting the Grim Reaper to offer workshops on preventive health. We can only hope that this current charade in the Senate is helping more Americans see the Republican priorities for what they show, an utter indifference to easily preventable deaths.
= new reply since forum marked as read
