The Moral Failing of Obamacare Repeal
By THERESA BROWNMARCH 11, 2017
PITTSBURGH — Imagine a car crash. There’s twisted metal, broken glass and the low moaning of an injured human being. An ambulance arrives, and two emergency medical technicians get out.
Now imagine this: One E.M.T. moves to the wreck, sees the wounded driver — a man, the one who’s moaning — and before doing anything else, flips down the driver’s seat visor, looking for an insurance card that isn’t there. Then he stands back up, frowns and shakes his head.
“No insurance?” his partner calls out. The E.M.T. shakes his head again.
“We could try,” the partner offers. “We could —”
“I tried last time,” the E.M.T. interrupts, cutting through air with a blunt slice of his hand. “It didn’t help,” he whispers, almost to himself.
Could this be America, some day? Maybe nothing this extreme would ever happen. But contrary to what some congressional Republicans say, a world in which it could is the logical conclusion of their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and set per capita caps on Medicaid — and the all-but-explicit desire among dozens of hard-liners.
The House leadership is making gestures toward covering the uninsured by retaining popular portions of the A.C.A. and offering a suite of “market-based” programs like health savings accounts and tax credits. In some ways, that’s their problem; if the Republican bill designed to replace the A.C.A. fails, it could well be because of pressure from the far right, which is insisting on repeal, full stop. For a large number of Congressional Republicans, any effort to cover the costs of care for the poor and uninsured smacks of socialism and unwelcome government interference in the market.
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