Friday, March 24, 2017

Republicans declare they have given up on Health Care for this Congress.

Think about that.
They have been saying they had a better plan for health care and vowed to repeal and replace for almost 8 years, even risking shutting down the government because the Freedom Caucus wanted to repeal ObamaCare.
Healthcare is a tough issue and the only one who did not think so was President Elect Trump.
Democrats managed to do it, though with all the compromises they had to make to pass it resulted in a less than perfect bill. Everyone says Obama Care needs to be fixed or replaced.
But at least Democarats proved they could organize enough to get some substantial progress.
More people have  health care now than before and though premiums have gone up for many of us they were going p every year anyhow.  I mean really does anyone believe insurance companies were going to lower premiums?  Of course not.

The difference is Democrats worked to get something done and Republicans have just declared that they give up after the first real effort. I am listening to Paul Ryan right now spinning it and saying that Obama Care is failing and horrible.  It is easier to blame someone else than to fix or come up with your own solutions.  Republicans just proved themselves unable to do the latter and prefer the former.

Why were they not able to get enough votes?

Conservative Republicans were saying it did not go far enough and needed to remove all the rules on insurance companies, remove the taxes on the wealthy to pay for it, cut back on Medicare, defund Planned Parenthood, and remove some features like emergency room coverage.
Moderate Republicans were concerned it would hurt the elderly the most (key Republican demographic) and removing Insurance for more than 24 million people were bad ideas.
The blame game has already started but the real failure here is the party had 8 years to plan for this, declared they had one and instead waited till the last minute and tried to rush something through in a few weeks.
President Obama worked on his plan for a year and a half and negotiated with as many people as he could, including doctors, and insurance companies.  He knew it would not be as good as he wanted but that some improvement was better than no improvement. Republicans have declared today on 3/24/2017 after a short effort that they are just giving up and taking their marbles home.
This party ran on this issue as a signature item for the last 7 years, claimed they had a plan but could not get it past President Obama and now having taken control of the House, Senate and the White House showed they are unable to get the job done.

We need real leadership

America deserves a government that will work for America and put it before their party.  America deserves politicians who will think ahead and plan for the long term.
Think about this the next time you go to the polls.  And remember to go to the polls, as part of the problem we have is low voter turnout because most of America is disgusted with politicians.
Ask questions and listen not to tv ads but actual policy choices. America can do better than the current mess of Republicans and Democrats.

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