Republicans Have Fallen Into Their Own Quicksand With Obamacare (The ACA)

When President Obama fought like hell to pass the ACA (The Affordable Care Act) and then failed to sell its virtues just as hard to the American people, Republicans said thank you very much for the opening. They then proceeded to derisively name it Obamacare and beat Democrats over the head with it, calling it a freedom destroying evil and vowing to do away with it at their first opportunity.

Now, however, that the Republicans are actually in a position to do away with the ACA the shoe is on the other foot. Millions of poor Americans terrified of losing their ACA insurance without a good replacement are furious with Republicans, to the delight of Democrats, for threatening to scrap it with no replacement on the able.

Whistling past the graveyard, Paul Ryan and other Republican dreamers blithely claim that they will soon be able to unveil a superior replacement for Obamacare, joining the Trump lairs brigade with such hogwash. The hard fact of the matter is that none of the main structures of the ACA can be significantly altered without creating a useless mess. In other words the only plan that would be superior to Obamacare is a universal healthcare system (Medicare for all), and of course that plan was the Democrat’s first choice before Obamacare, but trying to placate Republicans who see a universal healthcare system as over-the-top socialism, Obama and the Democrats went instead with the much clumsier ACA.

The potential irony here is that if the heat on the Republicans reaches an insufferable level they might feel burned enough to cut a deal with the Democrats for, heaven forbid, some sort of universal healthcare system, naturally not named as such, but in affect much the same thing. It might, indeed, be the only way Republicans can keep their promise to dismantle and replace Obamacare without being politically lynched by their constituents. This is really deep quicksand within which these Republicans find themselves sinking.