So, “Repeal and Replace” is yet another Trump failure. Why? The same reason why Obamacare is a failure. And the same reason why the system before that was a failure, too. Because, at the end of the day, our legislature wasn’t concerned with The People. They were arguing about money.
The sad fact here is that healthcare should be a given for all people, just like paved roads, a military, public schools, and Duluth Trading Company catalogs in your daily mail. That America is no closer to making this happen is pretty fucking terrifying by itself. That 35% of Americans — and every Republican and most Democrats in office — are working so very hard against it should tell you everything you need to know.
The fact is, health insurance companies as we think of them no longer exist. They have all become financial institutions driven and measured — as all large American corporations are — by one thing only. Stock value.
Sick people. Well people. Dying people. Drugs. MRI machines. Hospitals. These are all portals from which a slurry of money flows. Obamacare was a first tepid attempt to break the system. Insurance rates were soaring in the years before it. But, the industry helped write the ACA and that’s why it’s failing.
After some 40 attempts to repeal it — and one wheezy, caustic, ignorant, heartless attempt to replace it — one thing should be abundantly clear to everyone. If the Republicans or the Democrats or the Libertarians or the Green Party really wanted to ensure their dominance in American politics for the next three generations, they would pass single-payer, universal coverage tomorrow.
There are dozens of working models for it already. We’re the strongest, wealthiest, most fabulously awesome country on earth. Seems like a no-brainer. Maybe we need an MRI.