Obamacare Subsidies: Are Republicans More Stupid Than They Are Cruel? |
Obamacare Subsidies: Are Republicans More Stupid Than They Are Cruel?
Many predicted last fall that if the Obamacare subsidies ended, millions would forgo health coverage. Gee, guess what’s happened?
There are a lot of things wrong with today’s Republican Party. They lie. They lie about how much they lie. They have handed their party and our democracy to a conscience-less kleptocrat, and they adulate him the way Russian communists once lionized Stalin (massive, Stalinesque banners of Trump now adorn at least two federal office buildings, the Justice Department and the Department of Labor).
But here’s something that’s wrong with them that predates Trump. They have no solutions to anything. As we’re witnessing at the moment, Donald Trump has no idea of anything to do about inflation and gas prices. The last three Republican presidents have left office with the economy in a shambles. On education, the environment, you name it—no solutions. They don’t even bother. Newt Gingrich at least used to bother to pretend, back when he was speaker, with all his New Agey, Tofflerian mumbo-jumbo. In his day, Paul Ryan did terrific cosplay as a wonky “ideas guy.” But now they don’t even do that.
On no issue is this more obvious than on healthcare. They railed against Obamacare. They spent years vowing to repeal it and replace it with something better. They never could repeal it, despite more than 70 tries. And that’s a good thing for many reasons, but mostly because they never had anything to replace it with. Conservatives once acknowledged that lack of healthcare coverage in this country was a problem, for which they promoted free-market solutions. But now they don’t even do that. They ostracized Mitt Romney, the last guy who tried. If you don’t have healthcare, in Republican world, that’s your own lazy fault.
All of which brings us to what’s happening with Obamacare right now. You’ll recall last fall’s government shutdown. That happened in part because expanded Obamacare subsidies........