EDITORIAL: Health care is only as complicated as partisan politics makes it

July 29--Health care is complicated, as President Trump famously observed. It's so complicated that the Senate tied itself in knots trying and failing to pass a health care bill it didn't want to become the law of the land.

The explanation for why they'd want to do that is not all that complicated -- they just want to pass something, anything, so they can get to a conference committee with the House.

That's not complicated. But it gives people migraines, for which there are remedies if only they could afford them. It's a long, long way from figuring out how to make health care more accessible and affordable for more people.

And there's the point being missed. We are a nation with the means to cure illnesses and ease suffering, but not the will to deliver it.

The debate we're having as a nation now is not about health care per se. It's about whether to repeal and replace a mandatory health insurance law. The real stakes are who pays how much and for what, and who wins and loses politically. It's about power and money, not humanitarianism.

We all lose this kind of battle, rich or poor, Democrat or Republican.

For example, the so-called "skinny repeal" voted down early Friday was, technically, a Democratic Party victory. Hip-hip-hooray. All the Democrats accomplished, with the help of three Republican senators, was to stave off the replacement of a flawed system with a worse one. The skinny repeal needed to be obstructed. But that's what the Democrats achieved -- obstruction.

During his campaign, Trump promised winning. Using a Republican majority as a hammer to beat down the Democrats is not winning. It comes at the expense of too many Americans for it to be a win. This is what Republican Sen. John McCain warned about before voting with the Democrats.

And since we're on the subject of winning, the Republican election victory does not mean to-the-victor-go-the-spoils. That's medieval. Both parties need to do a better job of making sense of the election outcome and what it should portend for health care.

Democrats need to remember that they lost. They need to choose their resistances carefully and constructively. They need to do more than just say they're willing to come to the table if only the Republicans would let them. They should find and promote the compromises that will show they mean business when they say it.

The members of both parties need to be more honest with themselves, each other and the American people about what they intend to do.

The Republicans can start by coming clean on whether repeal-and-replace ever really meant replace, or just repeal. Chanting repeal-and-replace for seven years and not having a replacement when push comes to shove appears dishonest.

Repealing without replacing might be a disaster, but letting the market rather than the government determine the solution would be ideologically pure and honest, at least.

The Democrats need to show some urgency about addressing the Affordable Care Act's flaws, either by repairing it or accepting the alternative even if it's branded Trumpcare. They must not play a political long game of helping the Republicans fail and letting them take the fall. Gaining a few seats, or many seats, is not worth the damage done to the country in the meantime.

And Trump needs to stop sending the health insurance industry mixed signals about what will happen to the Affordable Care Act in the meantime -- unless sabotage is his game. Right now, the companies don't know if the administration will hold up the government's end on cost-sharing subsidies. The uncertainty is why premiums keep going up and insurers leave the market. It doesn't take a genius at business, like Trump claims to be, to know that businesses thrive on consistency and suffer from uncertainty.

One thing that has become clear is that health care costs, no matter how paid, are going out of control. We're in panic mode, caught up in who to stick with the bill. No matter how we identify ourselves politically, we all need health care and it shouldn't ruin us financially. Focus on that and work something out before we all die.

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