EDITORIAL: Ryan, Trump couldn’t save Trumpcare

Modesto Bee (CA)

March 24--Determined to destroy Barack Obama's signature health care achievement, Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump have insisted the Affordable Care Act is a failure. If it were a car, it would be "missing two tires, leak gas and have a busted transmission." It's in a "death spiral." Americans yearn to be freed from this "nightmare," they insisted.

Yet on Friday, as Trump and House Republicans conceded a humiliating defeat and pulled their repeal-and-replace bill minutes before a sure-to-lose vote was scheduled, polls showed no such sentiment among American voters.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found 51 percent don't want a repeal. A Quinnipiac poll showed only 17 percent want the Republican replacement. Not even a majority of Republicans liked the awful plan cooked up by Paul Ryan and the House, which would have left 24 million people uninsured over the next decade, and needlessly threatened the health care of millions of Californians including children and the elderly.

Why the disconnect? Maybe because the existing system, while flawed, isn't really a disaster. Maybe because Americans -- who mostly get health insurance through employers -- don't mind that 22 million of the less privileged can finally afford health care.

Maybe because what's collapsed is the construct of lies that Republicans have been using to undercut Obamacare.

Undoubtedly, we could have a meaningful debate about fair, affordable and appropriate healthcare in America and how to provide it. That debate would include replacing or repairing some parts of Obama's ACA. But that can't happen in the face of dishonesty and zealotry.

It wasn't Democratic opposition that doomed Trumpcare, it was the Freedom Caucus, which demanded the Republican replacement plan be stripped of any mandate requiring collective support for society's well being. The Freedomites insist that helping each other ought to be an option, not the law.

For them, it wasn't enough that the first draft of the GOP replacement would have caused 14 million people to give up their insurance -- by choice or lack of means -- while bestowing a $600 billion tax cut on the rich next year. They wanted to hasten that tax cut, halving the original plan's deficit reductions.

To do that, they would ax provisions requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions and inclusion of children up to age 26 on their parents' policies. They wanted states to impose work requirements on Medicaid patients, and force new mothers back to work within two months. They wanted to strip the measure of safeguards requiring insurers to cover health care essentials -- emergency services, rehabilitative services, maternity care, addiction treatment and mental health care.

Who knows what will happen now to the Republican alternative to Obamacare. Trump -- who, incredibly, tried to blame Democrats for his failure -- is trying to administratively gut it and make it worse perhaps believing pain will bring people back to the bargaining table. But Trump, Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy should think hard about such recklessness dishonesty; this truly is a life-and-death issue.

"Repeal-and-replace" would not, as Trump promised, produce "a beautiful picture" with coverage for "everybody." There are good reasons everyone from doctors to hospitals to retirees to even some Republican governors opposed their plan.

Voters want better health care, not frightening lies. If Republicans really want reform, perhaps they should invite in some of those who created such reform six years ago and work out a plan based in reality.

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Visit The Modesto Bee (Modesto, Calif.) at www.modbee.com

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