Allowing Greed To Trump Need

Welcome to Trumplandia! Where truth is irrelevant and facts matter not. The CBO score on the Senate’s version of the AHCA has been released – showing that 22 million more people would be without health insurance in ten years than would be the case if the ACA remained law of the land. Fifteen million would be tossed leading up to the 2018 midterm elections. What impeccable timing. But one should never underestimate the lengths to which the guardians of the oligarchy will go to enhance the bank accounts and overall wealth of those already so rich they don’t know what to do with it all.

This blatant attempt by the Congressional GOP and their President to feed the greed of the 1% and the corporations which have come to exert ever more political power in this country, especially since the advent of the Citizens United case and the demise of almost any campaign finance law, proposes to come at the expense of the most vulnerable and needy among us. Whereas the Affordable Care Act sought to plug the cracks through which many fell in their search for health coverage by expanding Medicaid, the AHCA seeks to not only do away with the Medicaid expansion, but to fundamentally change the nature of this largest Medical Insurance plan in the nation. The people most detrimentally affected by these massive cuts will be the poor, the elderly, the disabled and their children.

The way in which the Senate Republican leadership is attempting to force this legislation down the throats of the American people (which strongly mimics how the House managed to pass their version) comes as no surprise to those who have been paying attention to the multitude of repeal attempts these folks have been making ever since the ACA was passed. The fact that they have been promising for the past eight years to replace it with a better plan and this is all they could manage to come up with speaks volumes as to both their sincerity and the overall disdain they hold for the well-being of millions of those they have been elected to represent and serve in their capacity as public servants.

Not the least of these purveyors of the means by which millions of our fellow citizens will be thrown under the bus to provide increased creature comforts for Donald Trump’s elite country club set is the President himself. Having campaigned hard with promises to repeal and replace the law he refers to as “Obamacare” without touching Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare in the slightest, Donald Trump has signed on with these monstrous proposals with minimal protest. After having thrown a Rose Garden celebration of the passage of the House version, which he heartily endorsed all along the way, he had the gall to say he wanted the Senate version to have more heart than this mean bill the House had sent to them. That you can spout such utter hypocrisy with a straight face is appalling, Mr. President.  The Senate responded with a bill that lowered the number of those tossed aside in the health care world from 23 million to only 22 million compared to how they would have faired under the ACA. Good news for the million saved, but there is no need in this society for the other 22 million to still suffer.

The size of this windfall for the wealthy is almost as staggering as the numbers of people losing coverage is disheartening. That someone like billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson stands to make over $40 million from a retroactive tax cut that he can then use to buy himself some more politicians for further future gain, while untold numbers of others can no longer receive care for serious chronic or acute medical conditions boggles the mind. How many people need to be denied lifesaving treatment or medications so a Mitt Romney can afford another elevator for his luxury cars? Priorities seem to be seriously misplaced by a staggering percentage of our elected representatives.

To excuse redistributing resources up the economic ladder rather than opting for more economic equality on the basis of the often stated theory that it allows the wealthy to then create more and better jobs for the rest of us is, to quote Sherman Potter of MASH fame, balderdash. How many times have we heard this trickle down nonsense from right wing politicians in this country? The number is far greater than the number of times such tax cuts have actually worked to do anything other than bulk up the bank accounts of the people getting the tax cuts.

Donald Trump made many promises to earn the votes of the millions of people he is currently in the process of abandoning along his path self-glorification and the expanse of his business empire – primarily for the benefit of himself and his immediate family and at the expense of American taxpayers as much as possible. His dependence on the Congressional GOP to maintain his position will in all likelihood mean that whatever legislation they are able to cobble together to send his way will be signed. Most of his grandiose schemes (the Wall, the travel bans, the bringing back of jobs from overseas, the massive infrastructure plan) will see less than spectacular progress. The tax reform, which is evidently the main focus on this enormous effort to dismantle the ACA, will see results – but only the kind he seeks if people aren’t too resistant to the snake oil cure he is trying to sell them.

The Affordable Care Act has had its flaws, but it also has increased the number of people covered. Tweaking it could increase that coverage in the future. Going with a single-payer system that provides universal coverage for health care as a human right, not merely another avenue for exacerbating economic inequality, would make it better still. Maybe enough people will become outraged by the stark inhumanity of the outcome of legislation such as that before the Senate now to speed the arrival of such a system to replace it, but how many people need die or bankrupt themselves to satisfy the greed of capitalist pharmaceutical and health insurance companies, their executives and shareholders in the meantime?

The lid has been lifted from the pretense that the GOP has a plan to improve our health care system. They don’t care about ordinary Americans except as a resource to be exploited economically to their own benefit. For all his bluster to the contrary, Trump is no more looking out for our interests than the establishment politicians he lambasted on the campaign trail. He’s just a heck of a lot more dangerous because he has all those military toys he’s so anxious to use. He is also starting to make noises about letting the bill fail and watching what happens when Obamacare fails. Of course, it can only do that if Congress lets it happen.

Here’s hoping your July 4th sees no new Congressional disaster legislation passing – and the ominous warlike pronouncement from Sean Spicer’s office about impending Syrian chemical attacks does not mean we’ll be setting off the more harmful kinds of fireworks again in the Middle East. We all know Congress does an even worse job of constraining belligerent Presidents in their exercise of their Commander-in-Chief powers than it does in passing good legislation for the rest of us.

Further Suggested Readings:

The GOP healthcare bill could slash megadonor Sheldon Adelson’s tax bill by more than $40 million

McConnell tries to split the difference on protections for sickest Americans

GOP Medicaid Cuts Would Hit Rural Hospitals And Patients Hard

Big Pharma Gets $28 Billion Tax Break in GOP Health Plan

Paying More For Less: American Health Care Act

The Senate GOP health bill in one sentence: poor people pay more for worse insurance

GOP’s Cruel ‘Health Care’ Bill Goes After Children, the Poor and Veterans

Elizabeth Warren Excoriates Senate Republicans for Financing Their Tax Cuts with ‘Blood Money’

"Trump and health care: Promises made, promises broken"

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The Senate’s Silent and Deadly Health Care Repeal

GOP "Health" Bill: Death, Disaster and Gilded Age Greed

Rachel Maddow Shows How The New GOP Health Plan Will Devastate 75 Million Americans

Obama Blasts Republicans For Stealing People’s Heath Care In Order To Cut Taxes For Rich

A simple and horrifying way to explain Trumpcare’s impact on all Americans

Millions of people have a lot to lose under the AHCA

The Secret Republican Plan to Unravel Medicaid

Read the CBO report on the impact of Senate Republicans’ health care bill