The fake resistance Vichy Democrats, meanwhile, are doing their own oligarch-pleasing part by introducing a bill to merely "shore up" Obamacare and keep the private insurance predators in business. Single Payer is off the table. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made sure of that, just as she has made sure that impeachment is off the table.
Trump isn't even bothering suggesting a replacement for Obamacare this go-round. He wants, or at least pretends to want, to destroy the whole thing in one fell judicial swoop. He is using the tried-and-true Goebbels method of viciously going on the offense as a way to play cowardly defense. For despite all his boasts of "exoneration!" Trump is not out of the woods yet. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller III has reportedly farmed out acres of new evidence to states attorney general and US attorneys which tie him and his extended family to bank fraud, tax fraud, and real estate fraud, to name just three treats on the criminal smorgasbord. Never mind that these are the same local prosecution shops that have let the Trump empire get away with its sleaze for whole decades, absent making secret deals and paying the occasional civil fine. This time could be different, especially when there are political names to be made for any number of hungry headline-seeking prosecutors.
Now, here's where Trump's crusade to destroy Obamacare could hit a snag. As Vicky Ward lays out in her new book, "Kushner, Inc." the president's son-in-law Jared has a big financial stake in keeping Obamacare alive and kicking. His brother Josh's online health insurance company, currently valued at close to $3 billion, could be destroyed right along with the Affordable Care Act. Jared was adamantly opposed to the first attempt at repealing the law, for very good reason. Ward writes:
Josh had co-founded the online health insurer, Oscar, which was predicated on Obamacare: it could be purchased on the state exchanges that the Affordable Care Act had created.... If the new (repeal) legislation rolled back Obamacare, it could be financially catastrophic. Someone close to the brothers pointed out to me that "no other asset (in the Kushner family) comes close (to Oscar)."Trump's former economic adviser, Gary Cohn, a Democratic alumnus of Goldman Sachs, also opposed repealing Obamacare. Ward adds that at one point, Jared even brought in Obama health adviser Ezekiel Emanuel, to consult on saving the law and by extension, saving the family's financial skin.
It all became moot when the late John McCain cast the deciding GOP vote that saved the law.
I wonder if Ivanka might now whisper in Daddy's ear that, as pleasurable as it is to scare and sicken millions of people by ripping their health insurance out from under them, it might be smarter to keep the family peace, and most important of all, keep the windfall profits flowing to the family, all thanks to Obamacare. The Oscar company's bronze plan requires subscribers to pay an $18,000 deductible before they receive any benefits at all, making it as legally corrupt as most neoliberal schemes designed to extract money from the desperate and put it in plutocratic pockets for the greater pragmatic good.
It's quite the dilemma for Trump. He will have to choose between pleasing his base, and pleasing his kids and the insurance companies. What variety of greed and graft shall he pick? Stay tuned.
It's possible and even probable that Trump's latest authoritarian gambit is just another head fake to distract the country from his own cowering fears and continuing legal woes. It could even be a way of thanking Speaker Nancy Pelosi for squelching impeachment talk, for slapping his main rival Bernie Sanders' Medicare For All plan, and for fighting her very hardest to further enrich the health care marketplace which has been so good to Trump's in-laws and other wealthy investors.
The corporate Democrats' bill, after all, greatly expands federal subsidies to the insurance cartel, which is already flush with record windfall profits.
