If you promised to do something, but you found out that if you fulfilled your promise tens of millions of people would be hurt, and some may die, would you do it?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the question facing the U.S. Senate Republicans right now.<\/p>\n
For years, Republicans across the nation have pledged to \u201crepeal and replace\u201d the Affordable Care Act.\u00a0 Their promise was a cynical one since they never developed a replacement. Instead, they pandered to their supporters with a promise that was empty.<\/p>\n
But they did promise.<\/p>\n
Now, Republicans control both Houses of the Congress and the White House.\u00a0 For their supporters, it is time to deliver on that promise.<\/p>\n
But since the pledge was never serious and merely intended to throw \u201cred meat\u201d to a partisan base, the Republican Congressional leadership never had to contemplate the consequences of their failure to develop a meaningful alternative to the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n
When members of the House of Representatives voted to advance their \u201crepeal and replace\u201d plan, they did so without holding public hearings and without allowing the independent Congressional Budget Office time to analyze their replacement program.<\/p>\n
They dramatically limited independent analysis for one reason \u2013 they knew that their plan would hurt tens of millions of Americans.\u00a0 And when the Congressional Budget Office issued its review \u2013 after the Republican House members had approved it \u2013 the impact became clear: over 20 million Americans would lose their health care coverage.<\/p>\n
And losing health care coverage can be devastating: if someone gets sick and has no coverage, they can become deathly ill; and if their family tries to pay for care, they could become bankrupt.<\/p>\n
House Republicans knew this, but didn\u2019t care.\u00a0 A promise was a promise, no matter if it cost people their health, their income, or their lives.<\/p>\n
On the Senate side, a similar plan was offered.\u00a0 It too would have stripped away health insurance from tens of millions of Americans.\u00a0 It too would have led to needless illnesses, financial ruin, and early deaths that would have resulted from its plan.<\/p>\n
But the Senate is a different place. The majority cannot easily steamroll their legislation through.\u00a0 So the Republican leadership changed the rules to allow their so-called replacement to be considered \u2013 again with minimum public input \u2013 but the plan failed.\u00a0 Republicans have a small majority in the Senate and a few members thought that a promise that would hurt millions of people was a bad promise to have made, and worse to fulfill.<\/p>\n
Now the Senate Republican leadership is once again trying to advance a plan to strip health insurance away from millions.\u00a0 This time, there is additional pressure \u2013 from wealthy campaign donors.\u00a0 According to the New York Times, a wealthy Dallas businessman said he had formed a \u201cloose-knit coalition of donors who warned senior Republicans \u2014 including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader \u2014 that contributions would dry up if Congress did not overhaul the tax code and repeal the Affordable Care Act.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why would rich campaign contributors want to strip away benefits from lower income people?\u00a0 We can only guess that it\u2019s part of some ideology. But we should expect our public officials to stand up to those pressures.<\/p>\n
Yet, weak-kneed Senators have advanced a new plan, one that not only takes away coverage from tens of millions of Americans, but is also considered unworkable by experts.\u00a0 The plan is so flawed and cruel that Republican opposition from governors and a small group of U.S. Senators may doom it.<\/p>\n
Why should Americans have to experience this spectacle?\u00a0 How can a nation which currently spends far more than any nation on its health care, yet has mediocre health outcomes and millions of people still without health insurance \u2013 have as its top domestic debate plans to make things worse?\u00a0 All because elected officials have not been interested in telling the truth.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepeal and replace\u201d is a fraud.\u00a0 It appears that all some donors, activists and the Congressional leadership want is repeal.\u00a0 They don\u2019t seem to care about who gets hurt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you promised to do something, but you found out that if you fulfilled your promise tens of millions of people would be hurt, and some may die, would you do it? That\u2019s the question facing the U.S. Senate Republicans right now. For years, Republicans across the nation have pledged to \u201crepeal and replace\u201d the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1956"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1960,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions\/1960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}