The GOP’s New Healthcare Plan Is Bad On Purpose

Last updated on: March 8, 2017 at 3:58 pm by Matthew Tyson

The GOP’s New Healthcare Plan Is Bad On Purpose 2017-03-08T15:58:47-05:00 Matthew Tyson

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Throughout his campaign, Trump promised to get rid of the “disaster” of Obamacare and replace it with something far, far better. He promised that Americans would have access to better, cheaper coverage and that no one would have to go without it.

Well, the new GOP bill to replace Obamacare is out, and everyone is talking about how it delivers on every single one of Trump’s promises.

Just kidding. They’re actually talking about how bad it is, and how it doesn’t fulfill any of Trump’s promises. The bill has already drawn heavy criticism from AARP, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and even a handful of Republicans—along with the expected, overwhelming Democratic opposition.

While problems are numerous, the primary issue with the plan—generically named the American Health Care Act—is that it removes virtually everything that made healthcare affordable and accessible under the ACA in the first place: tax subsides, the individual mandate (sort of), and the medicaid expansion. Instead, we just get a tax break that, unlike the subsides, doesn’t rise with the cost of healthcare, won’t do that much to actually help low income residents, and leaves the elderly more exposed.

All in all, the AHCA doesn’t seem to be a well thought out piece of legislation and comes off as a half hearted attempt to just produce something, anything, to appease voters. Which wouldn’t be all that surprising, considering that Republicans have spent the majority of their time ranting and raving about Obamacare instead of putting in the work to draft a viable alternative.

Then again, it’s entirely possible that, in the eyes of the GOP, this is the viable alternative.

See, the naked truth is that America is too big and too diverse for healthcare to rely entirely on the market and tax breaks. Barring a shift to a single payer system, any plan that honestly wishes to provide affordable coverage to everyone will *have* to include a mandate and subsides or a public option (or both, really).

The problem is that none of these things really vibe with modern Republican ideology, and that’s the real heart of the matter. This was never about making sure *everyone* had affordable, quality healthcare. It was about reshaping the country to fall in line with a Republican worldview that is driven almost entirely by free market capitalism and social Darwinism, and the new bill checks off every box.

Can’t afford the coverage? Too bad. That’s the market for ya’. Maybe you should just use all that money you were gonna drop on the new iPhone for coverage instead. Hey, at least we’re free of that dirty, awful socialism right?

By the way, this is so, so, so not Catholic. Not by a long shot. As I’ve written before, government and citizens alike have a duty to ensure *all* have healthcare. Period.

Whether or not this bill actually passes is another story. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that Trump and the GOP are clueless. They know what they’re doing, and this is exactly what they want.

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