Stealing the People's Trust

In the next Series of Unfortunate Decisions, the Republican Congress once again betrays the American people. Surprised? You probably shouldn't be at this point, but allow me to explain.

It’s been a while since I’ve contributed to the Republican Congress’s Series of Unfortunate Decisions, but that’s not because they’ve magically reformed. Today’s contribution goes to the Republican Senate, where they’ve decided that building on the work of Democrats in the House of Representatives, who forced a vote on extending subsidies, was a bridge too far. Instead of acting promptly to approve the bill and allow the subsidies to continue for three years, the Republican Senate seems to be trying to make a deal to change that period to two years. But here’s the rub: Thursday, January 15, was the final day to sign up for ACA insurance plans.

This means that the rates that were being agreed to upon sign-up for the plan were not the subsidized rates, which means the overall enrollment in ACA plans went down. This has consequences because as the insurance pool gets smaller, the insurance gets even more expensive. This is Insurance-101. Further, by making changes to the plan, this bill will have to go back to the House of Representatives to get re-certified by the House, or whatever the right terminology is, before it can be signed into law. Further, Trump has already said that he would veto the law, so if the Senate doesn’t get a veto-proof majority, as they did with the Epstein files, then the subsidies will likely not be extended at all.

So you may be saying to yourself: who’s so cruel as to force people who have no other means off of the only health plans that would cover them? Well, the Republican Congress—that’s who.

Of course, they spin it.

They pretend that there are hundreds of thousands of able-bodied people somehow mooching off of insurance. They pretend that they’re helping to incentivize people, and really, it’s somehow a sort of tough love. They pretend that their glorified Free Market gives a damn about whether people live or die: it doesn’t, just look at the 1930s to understand that. At least, a lot of the rank and file say that they believe in the free market. The party leadership, more and more looking like it’s basically the billionaire party, really don’t seem to give a damn.

Let’s quickly review the facts. During Trump’s first term, the Republicans wanted to do away with the ACA. They claimed they had something even better, but the truth was, as we all now know, they didn’t. We’ve yet to see a Republican plan that was anything other than “let the market decide,” even though we’ve seen throughout history how “the market” decides about health care. In fact, that’s why we invented the Affordable Care Act in the first place. If “the market” was going to decide not to let a bunch of Americans die needlessly, then we wouldn’t have the ACA at all. But I digress.

When Trump got re-elected (I threw up a little in my mouth typing that), then they decided to go for it. But this time, they tried to do it by inaction. It’s the Republicans who demand things like sunsetting of these policies that help the American people, so it’s no doubt their influence that led to the sunsetting of the subsidies in the first place. So by inaction, they thought nobody would notice as they killed off the ACA. They thought they would just blame the Dems, a tried-and-true strategy for them.

Democrats brought the fight this time! They screamed loud enough to bring this to everyone’s attention during the last government shutdown, which we all now know was more about the Epstein files than almost anything else. So now, the Republican Congress was caught with egg on their faces, so they had to at least look like they were acting. Hence, and this is my opinion, there was a break in ranks on the ACA, and a lot of Republican House Members joined the Dems, probably thinking the bill would die in the Senate.

And, as you can see, their gamble is working. The Republican Senate, through procedure, is in the process of letting the bill die slowly. How do we know? Well, let’s assume the subsidies are reintroduced. What happens next? Next, we have to deal with the problem of what to do about the people who have already signed up for the ACA by the deadline for the higher rates, which is everyone who is still on the ACA. I’m guessing further Congressional action would be required to make them whole. Further, the reduction in the insured pool I talked about and the subsequent increase in insured risk aren’t going to magically fix themselves. The Republican Congress has shattered trust in the ACA, and a lot of those people won’t come back, so rates will continue to rise. The ACA at this point has entered into a doom spiral, and without the full backing of the government, may not survive at all.

So at the end of it, I’m blaming the Republican Congress for undermining, once again, the will and faith of the American people. I consider them to be against the people at this point. After all, and to switch topics just for the space of an example, do we think ICE would be where it is without the Republican Congress’s rubber stamps? Nope. And don’t believe for a second that it’s all Trump’s doing. This is your Republican Party today.

They are the party of the billionaires, bought and sold.

Here’s a quick link so you can see where the ACA status is: https://ground.news/article/final-day-to-select-aca-health-plans-arrives-in-most-states-with-no-subsidy-deal-yet. Read it for yourself, and put the timeline together. These jokers (in the most cynical sense of the word) want nothing to do with helping the American people.