As I guessed that it would a week ago, President Trump's threat to kill Obamacare via some reactionary judges went nowhere fast. It was a diversionary tactic designed to make us forget about the still-secret Mueller report, of which he no doubt has gotten an exclusive sneak peak. Though exonerating Trump of plotting an electoral conspiracy with Russia, it is reportedly none too flattering to him.
Trump's bluster was bound to be short-lived, because the Republican senate majority doesn't want to risk trashing the Affordable Care Act so close to the 2020 election. In their heart of hearts, they love this plan, massive giveaway to the private insurance industry that it is. Moreover, Trump's own in-laws have their own huge stake in the grift, with the crown jewel of the Kushner brothers' financial empire being a multi-billion dollar online insurance company which depends on the ACA to survive.
Of course, the biggest beneficiary of Trump's short-lived health care head fake was the Democratic Party, which pounced on his threat as a means to raise campaign money while defending Obamacare in lieu of introducing Medicare For All legislation in the lower House. As a matter of fact, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's health care henchman, Wendell Primus had personally reassured insurance industry executives right after the November midterms that their capitalistic system would be living long and prospering under Pelosi's watch.
The secret meeting, originally reported by The Intercept in February, got renewed attention this week with some new reporting in Politico. Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Pramila Jayapal, chief author one of the single payer bills (HR 1384) confronted Primus directly over his undemocratic subterfuge.
This confrontation came only one day after Trump abruptly reversed course on his Obamacare offensive. His latest head fake has left Pelosi and her minions suddenly deprived of the fear-based rationale for keeping the neoliberal "there is no alternative" ACA alive. They find themselves forced to feebly deny the reports that they are actively trying to kill the universal care legislation supported by at least 70% of the electorate, including Republican voters. However, neither she nor Primus apologized for meeting secretly with insurance industry lobbyists in the first place.
Right before Trump inconveniently nixed his threat and left the Democratic leadership scrambling, the New York Times' Paul Krugman penned an exquisitely timed column about the latest nasty Republican plan to yank health care away from tens of millions of people. Being a victim of Trump's chronic head fakes is a terrible thing. This is despite the fact that Krugman dutifully inserts the latest tally of Trump's lies right at the beginning of his piece. As of Monday, at about the same time Trump was changing his mind via Twitter, he had lied a grand total of 4,682 times! He also happened to conduct his head fake reversal on April Fools Day.
Krugman writes:
Republicans just keep telling the same lies, over and over. Again and again they have promised to maintain coverage and protect pre-existing conditions — then offered plans that would cause tens of millions to lose health insurance, with the worst impact on those already suffering from health problems.....In other words, Krugman hews steadfastly to the corporate Democrat plan, sold to a scared public during the latest Trump Threat Week, to merely protect coverage for pre-existing conditions as well as increasing federal subsidies for private insurers -- including, but by no means limited to, the very same Kushner family that liberal corporatists only pretend to hate.
ut Republicans cannot admit that the only way to protect pre-existing conditions is to emulate Democratic policies. The party of Eisenhower, or even the party of Nixon, might have been able to do such a thing, but the party of Fox News cannot.
Nor, however, do Republicans dare admit that they have no interest in providing protection that a vast majority of voters demands. So they just keep lying.
My published response to Krugman:
How often do Republicans lie? How much do they despise everyone except rich people, preferably male and white? Let us tally up the totals and feel alternately angry and smug. Because hey, at least the Dems will fight for our inalienable right to pay hefty premiums to insurance companies and force them to cover the pre-existing conditions of some of us! After all, they're protecting a GOP plan, which leaves the GOP nowhere else to go but off the Social Darwinist cliff.
If we keep shooting stinking GOP fish in a barrel, maybe we can take the uninsured and underinsureds' minds off the fact that the US is the only civilized country lacking universal health coverage, and that the life expectancy of US citizens has dropped for a third straight year.
Anything to avoid informing people that contrary to centrist propaganda, any extra taxes they'd have to pay for Medicare For All would be far, far less than the premiums, co-pays, deductibles and other out of pocket medical expenses they now pay to our cutthroat market-based system.
And that includes the cost of an ever-increasing number of premature burials.
Put another way, although 23 million people would lose coverage if the ACA is killed, another 29 million desperate people currently lack any coverage at all. But somehow, these have-nots aren't mentioned when pundits warn us not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Instead, we're told to feel guilty about the great national tragedy of jobless insurance adjusters.*****
Here's more excellent input from Dr. Adam Gaffney of Physicians for a National Health Plan:
