The Laudable Pursuit: The Missing Ingredient in BCRA: Humility
"to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life." --
A Message from
No, the
It cuts taxes. It bails out insurance companies. It props up Obamacare through the next election. It lays out plans to slow Medicaid spending beginning in 2025, but that probably won't happen. And it leaves in place the ham-fisted federal regulations that have driven up family health insurance premiums by 140 percent since Obamacare was implemented.
As the bill is currently drafted, I won't vote for it.
On the other hand, I understand the opportunity
That's why I joined the
At the beginning of this process, I wanted a full repeal of Obamacare. Despite campaigning on that very thing for eight years, my Republican colleagues disagreed.
So then I called for a partial repeal, like we passed in 2015 - and which conservatives were promised by our leaders in January. A partial repeal would at least force
Again, no.
So then I advocated repealing Obamacare's regulations, which have been the primary drivers of spiking premiums. I repeated this suggestion at every single meeting of the working group, and at every members lunch for several weeks. Yet when the Better Care Reconciliation Act was unveiled yesterday, the core Obamacare regulations were largely untouched.
Far short of "repeal," the
Yet, for all that, I have not closed the door on voting for some version of it in the end.
Conservatives have compromised on not repealing, on spending levels, tax credits, subsidies, corporate bailouts, Medicaid, and the Obamacare regulations. That is, on every substantive question in the bill.
Having conceded to my moderate colleagues on all of the above, I now ask only that the bill be amended to include an opt-out provision, for states or even just for individuals.
The reason Americans are divided about health care (like so many issues today) is that we don't know exactly how to fix it. Politicians hate to admit it, and partisans like to pretend otherwise. But it's true.
And history teaches us that when we don't know how to solve a problem, the best thing to do is to experiment. We should test different ideas through a cooperative, bottom-up, trial-and-error process rather than imposing top-down, partisan power-plays that disrupt the lives of hundreds of millions of people at a time.
Eight years ago
Why do
The only hope for actually solving the deep, challenging problems in our health care system is to let people try out approaches other than the ones a few dozen politicians thought up inside the D.C. bubble.
And so, for all my frustrations about the process and my disagreements with the substance of
The only way to find out what does work is to find out what doesn't. We know the pre-Obamacare system was breaking down. Now we know Obamacare is failing too. I doubt the
To win my vote, the Republican health care bill must create a little space for states and individuals to sidestep
At some point
To win my vote, the Republican health care bill must create a little space for states and individuals to sidestep
Recent history suggests they couldn't possibly do worse.
Getting More of What We Want Out of Government
Issue in Focus: America First in the
Unfortunately, it appears our recent involvement with the
The
While the
The
It has promoted abortion in countries party to the
The IACHR also has promoted redefining the institution of marriage, including the 2016 Duque vs Colombia case where the IACHR stated that
Trump has indicated his desire to rebalance our foreign policy to better serve the American people. The
Our national interest lies in promoting security and economic prosperity for Americans, not in telling other democracies what to do. Respecting the cultural and religious differences of our allies should be a top priority for an administration that campaigned on breaking away from business-as-usual foreign policy.
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