EDITORIAL: Prescription: pain. Trump wants to undo Obamacare now and talk about a replacement in two years

April 03-- Apr. 3--President Trump wants the entire Affordable Care Act -- including provisions that guarantee coverage for people with preexisting conditions, let parents keep their children on their health plans until age 26 and give some 20 million people access to insurance they'd otherwise lack -- invalidated in court. As soon as possible.

He wants a Republican replacement plan to debut, oh, around about 2021.

The new timeline comes after the president promised last week, apparently without consulting anyone, that the GOP would really really soon come up with something tremendous, spectacular, stupendous and a few other adjectives, only to be told by Sen. Mitch McConnell and others that well, um, actually, they got nothing.

Turned out, Republicans in the House and Senate would far rather spend the 2020 campaign pillorying Democrats on their ambitions to extend health care to all Americans than run the risk of offering a plan that turned out to be less popular than Obamacare or Medicare for All.

This portrait in cowardice has led us to the current moment, in which Trump wants to shred the current law without having even the suggestion of a semblance of an alternative in its place. Medically speaking, this is the equivalent of a doctor withdrawing all medication from an ailing patient now, then starting to think about an alternative treatment plan after his six-month tour of Europe.

Consult your malpractice attorney.

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