Bad Medicine Is What They Need!

As near as I can tell, the Trump Administration would like to get a "repeal and replace" thing done very quickly because they need a win--but I really don't think they care at all what is in it, because the original version didn't even fulfill Trump's campaign promises regarding health care. He even went so far as to imply that not voting for the repeal and replace measure could cost GOP House members their seats.

VP Mike Pence worked on them, too, but so many members simply failed to be as ecstatic as Speaker Paul Ryan was over the prospect of 24 million Americans losing their coverage and several millions more having their premiums go up.

So what are they doing? Why, they are diluting the mandatory coverage so that premiums stay low enough for people to accept weak tax credits for shittier coverage, meaning that tax money will go to providing people with the kind of coverage that should be a shame to offer at any price. No one at this rate will know what exactly is in the bill until it passes, and it's guaranteed to still cover less people and do less for them. But to what extent we won't know, because there will be no CBO score on that at all.

And for all I know, this crazy unhealthy unpopular nonsense might even succeed. Not that I think congresspeople up for re-election should want getting this wrong on their c.v. But didn't Trump tell them this was important? And to never mind the people showing up at their townhalls?

I am interested in the outcome--not in the same way a person with pre-existing condition(s) is, or who knows someone or is someone who could easily exhaust a cap right at the beginning of a year, or who has health care only because the exchanges plus a subsidy were available to them. Not in the same way a person who might be penalized by Medicaid by having to pay back benefits for having a body with leukemia tastes on a laryngitis budget would. But as a person who really wants to know who will take the leap with Trump and Ryan over this bad medicine bill. And who wonders just where that will get them.