Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and the Republican Party have suffered a massive defeat, in their failure, after 60 votes over the past six years to destroy Obama Care, and now being unable to control their own caucus and accomplish its demise yesterday in the House of Representatives.
The Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, Can still undermine the enforcement of the law, and cause it to fail, but it will put the blame on Donald Trump for failure to enforce the law as it is, until and when it is repealed and replaced.
The irony of it all is that Obama Care is really the Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich Heritage Foundation program of 1993, offered as an alternative to Hillary Care, and is also based on Romney Care in Massachusetts, but once Obama was elected, the GOP decision was to refuse to accept any health care plan, and Mitt Romney ran against his own program in Massachusetts, when he opposed Obama in the 2012 Presidential election.
So both the Republican Party and Mitt Romney were engaged in total hypocrisy, when Obama settled for what has become law, due to the difficulties in gaining “a public option”, or promoting “Medicare For All”, a single payer system, when both would have taken control away from the health insurance companies.
The proposed bill that never came to a vote yesterday would have caused 24 million to lose all health care coverage, and would have given massive tax cuts to the wealthy yet a third time, after Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and George W. Bush in the 2000s, taking the needs of the wealthy who do not need a tax cut over the needs of millions of Americans.
Donald Trump has failed, and has discovered that his business methods do not work in politics, with him having believed like Ross Perot in the 1990s, that all you had to do was take the politicians into a room, and you could force them to do what you want, and both Perot in theory then, and now Trump in practice, is learning otherwise.
So we saw yesterday a rare moment of humility by Trump, who had claimed Obama Care would be gone on the first day of his Presidency.
We also saw yesterday the gleeful Paul Ryan, so anxious since college to destroy the social safety net while drinking kegs of beer and failing in love with lunatic Ayn Rand, finally getting his comeuppance.
The GOP is doomed as long as they allow the 30 or so members of the House Freedom Caucus to hold them hostage, a group which forced John Boehner out of the Speakership in 2015.
It is time for Ryan to start working for bipartisan government, and ask Democrats for help, as otherwise the GOP will fail to get anything done, since the anarchistic Freedom Caucus is out to destroy government itself, and must be repudiated totally, and told where they can go.
The Republican Party may be the majority right now, but public opinion has turned against them on health care, with only 17 percent supporting the failed Ryan health care plan.
So Ryan Care or Trump Care lies in ruins at this time, and it is well deserved.
There have been some thoughts, or even talk, about speaker Paul Ryan being in trouble. But, I think you to have look to not just that.
Donald Trump’s Republican Party should lose in the midterm elections of 2018. If he gets re-elected in 2020 (which, looking at how the establishment Democrats’ operatives are entrenched in their corruption, makes that look likely), the Democrats should also have seat gains in 2022.
It has to do with voting patterns. The 17th Amendment. For a good 100-year period, with midterm elections, a president’s party had the overall gains in only three election cycles: 1934, 1998, and 2002.
Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic Party never lost their majority during his presidency.
Richard Nixon’s Republican Party never had the majority during his presidency.
Every other two-term president, who typically came into power with same-party majority control with at least one House of Congress (usually the U.S. Senate before the U.S. House; think Ronald Reagan), ended up losing same-party majority control with a midterm elections cycle.
Donald Trump is the type of U.S. President who should be able to usher the Democrats back into some power. They would flip the U.S. House first. (That is, if the U.S. Senate doesn’t flip with the same election cycle. Think of the Republicans, off Democratic president Barack Obama, in 2010 with the U.S. House and then 2014 with the U.S. Senate.)
Problem with this Democratic Party: they are divided. How deep is the divide? That is within the party; for what it stands for (if anything); where the power in the party is directing their ship; and what it needs to be. But, still, the Democrats should be able to have gains in 2018 (like with also governorships and state legislatures). We’ll eventually find out.
As Winning Progressive’s latest blog post points out, this victory is due to grassroots efforts – people organizing, calling their Congresspeople, showing up to rallies, and otherwise making it clear to Democrats and “moderate” Republicans that the ACA should be protected and improved, not repealed.
https://www.facebook.com/WinningProgressive/posts/1603517149658785
Excellent breakdown of the Democrats ideas for improving health care.
http://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/03/27/democratic-ideas-on-how-to-improve-health-care-are-complicated-too/#.WNlXVycoPRw.facebook
I am supportive of the following:
Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act, H.R. 676
http://www.healthcare-now.org/legislation/hr-676/
Introduced by Rep. John Conyers.
Read the full bill from the 115th Congress (2017-2018).
Read the summary of HR 676 from the 115th Congress (2017-2018).
See the full list of Congressional HR 676 cosponsors for the 115th Congress (2017-2018).
Brief Summary of the Legislation
The United States National Health Care Act (USNHC) establishes a unique American universal health insurance program with single payer financing. The bill would create a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system that improves and expands the already existing Medicare program to all U.S. residents, and all residents living in U.S. territories. The goal of the legislation is to ensure that all Americans will have access, guaranteed by law, to the highest quality and most cost effective health care services regardless of their employment, income or health care status. In short, health care becomes a human right. With 47 million uninsured Americans, and another 50 million who are underinsured, the time has come to change our inefficient and costly fragmented non-system of health care.
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If I have it correct, H.R. 676 would get introduced by U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D–Michigan #13) in the U.S. House and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.–Vermont) in the United States Senate. (Conyers was my congressman during the 2002–2010 period.)
Needless to say, D, I am one hundred percent with you on this, wish it could occur, and it should!