OK.
Well... as literally everyone knows: healthcare is complicated!
Here are the facts:
- Modern Republican ideology does not believe the government should have any part in healthcare. They believe it should be left to the private markets.
- The also know this is an enormously unpopular opinion. People rely on Medicaid. People rely on the ACA, even though they know it falls short.
- The ACA is the MOST conservative route to making sure healthcare is provided to all Americans. It cannot get any more conservative without people losing coverage and premiums rising. If there were a way to make it more conservative, that plan would have been floated long ago.
- The flaws with the ACA are easily fixed. Here's are some internet articles which you can read, or you can take my word for it because I'm right.
- The president does not understand how health insurance works and is only interested in a win
- I don't know if Mitch McConnell is so eager to repeal the ACA because of Republican ideology or because he's a political hack who's lost the ability to see government beyond winners and losers. Doesn't really matter. What matters is that his own constituents went from 20.8% uninsured to 7.8% uninsured between 2013-2016 because of Medicaid expansion (called Kynect there) and will be among the 18-22 million people who will lose coverage if the ACA is repealed. Actually, I'm sort of leaning towards partisan hack.
- He is currently pushing for a vote on Tuesday to repeal the ACA and then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- The plan is to pass something without a CBO score, under the cover of darkness, while folks are confused and think it's dead. It's not dead.
- There were months and months of public hearings on the ACA. It took over a year to pass and Republicans always had a seat at the table. This current mishegas is entirely covert.
- This doesn't just affect the poor saps on Medicaid. Insurance markets will collapse under this plan
- And, no, you shouldn't hope that they repeal it, everything goes tits up and then the Republicans lose. Because people will die. Because right now there's some guy with cancer in Kentucky who voted for Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump and we are not monsters who hope he'll die for those sins. Because right now there's a woman in Chicago (which is in Illinois, where our Republican governor has had NOTHING to say about this because he is a huge coward) who relies on Medicaid to keep her blood pressure meds. We're goddamn motherfucking better than the political hacks who play with people's lives for petty politics.
Here's the last thing that matters and I'm gonna go ALL CAPS AND BOLD when I say this:
YOUR CALLS MATTER
If you have a Republican senator, they need to know that this is a career-defining vote (to quote my boyz at Crooked Media). Pick up your phone and give 'em a big old:
Don't go all:
Because you're just talking to some poor staffer. But if you happen to run into a Republican senator and he tells you that no one will lose coverage, I highly encourage you to go all:
But no matter what, come Monday, pick up your phones, hit up ResistBot, send a fax, do something.
(Although, if I'm channeling Robin Wright, I'd really rather we were all:
)
So, let's do it, my #HappyWarriors! Don't let those bastards grind us down. It's only a phone call so just do it! And once we finally kill this thing dead, we can get cracking on Single Payer!
