Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bob Stannard, an author, musician and former lobbyist. This piece first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
Fool me once shame on you.
Fool me again and again and again shame on me.
– Italian proverb
[S]o now the Trump administration is declaring all-out war on the Affordable Care Act, threatening to kill it altogether. If successful, some 10-20 million Americans would lose their health care. However, these folks need not worry, because it’s not going to happen. Why is it not going to happen? Let’s explore that.
If the ACA is abolished then what? The Republicans will finally be forced into coming up with their own plan, something that they are, to their core, opposed to doing. They (and their donors) are committed to destroying any and all programs that help people. Creating a plan to help people is not what they are about. They want to cut Medicare, Social Security, education, the Special Olympics, school lunch programs — you name it. If a program is good for the masses, it’ll be on the chopping block. After having given back $2 TRILLION to their already very rich donors they are now crying that there’s no money for anything, well, except for the No. 1 bloated government agency, the military. There’s always plenty of money to shovel into that black hole of wasteful spending, but that’s fine. We need to spend more than what the next seven countries combined spend to protect ourselves from a hacker.
Should the president succeed in killing the ACA, a void will be created, and that void may very well be filled by a Medicare for All plan being proposed by the progressives. Medicare for All is the most terrifying health care plan in the world. Not for the people, but for the industry.
In his column in VTDigger, Lee Russ does a terrific job of explaining why Trump is putting forth the demise of the ACA. He describes how private equity companies are buying up health care facilities.
Who won big in the ACA? Insurance companies. Who else? President Barack Obama’s efforts for a public option died within weeks of being proposed. A public option or Medicare for All program would cut the insurance companies out of the health care business, a business focused more on profits than on health care, and they sure don’t want that.
This ruse by Trump is really quite clever. By saying they want to kill ACA they have, thus far, successfully, tricked progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into supporting the continuance of the ACA, exactly what the industry wants.
What should happen is that all Democrats in Congress allow Trump to kill the ACA. It’s clear that neither Trump nor the GOP have a health care plan. They never have and never will. They’re banking on the Democrats to jump up and down screaming about keeping the ACA and like a hungry fish, the Democrats are taking the bait.
Allowing the demise of the ACA would accomplish two things. First, it would allow the Democrats to pin the removal of health care for millions of Americans squarely on the forehead of Republicans, right where it belongs. Then, after letting that sink in, the opportunity to advance Medicare for All would present itself as really the only alternative.
Americans need and want a national health care program. It’ll be up to the Democrats to make it happen, just like it always has been.
