EDITORIAL: Health care bill is just an exercise in futility

March 23--As they have watched their government in these surreal, chaotic weeks since Donald Trump took office, Americans have found little they could recognize as familiar.

Lurching from one mostly self-inflicted crisis to another, Trump finds himself the subject of an FBI investigation into connections between his campaign and the Russians and faces weeks of congressional inquiries into the blatant lie he tweeted that accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping the Trump headquarters before the election.

The public has seen all this disorganization, and it doesn't like it at all, leading to the president's 37 percent approval rating, lower than any ranking of Obama during his time in office.

People are confused, wondering when things will settle down into the normal partisan bickering with which they are accustomed. The country is badly in need of something familiar out of Washington.

To the rescue charge the Republican members of the House of Representatives.

Over the last eight years, they voted to repeal, defund or otherwise cripple Obamacare as many as 60 times, knowing that their efforts would die in the Senate or by presidential veto. And now, they are at it again.

A vote in the House is scheduled today, and while there is a certain element of doubt about whether enough Republicans will come to the aid of their party, the measure may just squeak through. If so, there will be hearty congratulations back and forth among the GOP members and utterances in front of myriad microphones about how they have kept their promise to the American people.

Then, the bill will face certain extinction in the Senate for two reasons.

One is that there won't be a single -- or for that matter, married -- Democrat who will vote for it.

The other is that it is a horrid bill.

Moderate Senate Republicans will not walk away from it. They will run away from it. Certain more-conservative members of the party will find fault with it, too.

And then, there are the promises Trump has made about how wonderful the replacement for Obamacare would be and how it would include "insurance for everybody."

"What my plan is is that I wanna take care of everybody. I'm not gonna leave the lower 20 percent that can't afford insurance," he told ABC News in January. "We're gonna come up with a new plan that's going to be better health care for more people at a lesser cost."

Well, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Republican plan will result in 14 million fewer Americans insured next year, and 24 million fewer in 2026. Older Americans would see their premiums go up 20-25 percent.

House Republicans of a more-conservative bent have derided the bill as "Obamacare-Lite, insisting it creates new entitlements the government cannot afford. Moderates, mostly in the Senate, are squawking about many of their constituents losing coverage.

If it determines there are not enough votes to pass the legislation, the GOP leadership will withdraw it and begin plotting to fight it out another day. If it does pass, it will just be yet another pyrrhic victory for House Republicans.

Just like old times.

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