While Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine stand, along with the entire Democratic Party, as front-line stewards of congestive failure, the real loss is measured in the distance between promises made and promises kept, the ideals of representative democracy and elected officials reverence for it.
It has long been my opinion and recommendation that the Repeal & Replace concept should have been sidelined until a roll-out of a Complete Replacement Plan was published. The critical issue to be observed here is this: The Senate couldn’t muster the 51 votes from either Party to pass the so-called “Skinny” Bill which further confirms the severity of the underlying problem.
For Politicians, the problem is how do they avoid having to tell the truth about Obamacare, the damage it has done to the economics and structure of healthcare and the insurance markets? The fact that Obamacare was never about Healthcare Coverage from the “markets”, but the syphoning-off of premium paying and non-paying customers into Medicaid under the promise that Obamacare would subsidize the State’s costs using two very devious and corruptible methods:
(1) Taxpayer Subsidies
(2) Rationed Care
There are far too many vested interests asserting corruptible influences that are masking, from public view, the many facets of the national healthcare system and the near irreparable damage done by the Democrats for having passed ACA in the first place.
At this point, going forward, it may be that Trump’s best strategy is to stick with a straight “Repeal Only” format and leverage the Bully-Pulpit of the Presidency to pressure Congress to move affirmatively on Tax Reform and then hold the lot of them to the fire in the upcoming 2018 Election Cycle.
Curtis C. Greco, Founder