A Brief Thought: Opportunity Lost – Trumpcare Falls Edition

NinaIllingworth March 25, 2017November 17, 2022 A Brief Thought, ACA, ACHA, Affordable Care Act, American Health Care Act, Bernie Sanders, blog, bloodsuckers, CA4, compromises, corporate Democrats, corporate donors, corruption, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, donors, elites, for profit medical insurance, Freedom Caucus, health, health insurance, health insurance industry, healthcare, insurance scam, leeches, lie, Meme, missed opportunity, Mitt Romney, money in politics, News, Nina Illingworth, Obamacare, Op-Ed, Paul Ryan, Pelosi, Politics, public healthcare, Rec Reads, Recommended Reading, Republican Party, rich donors, Romneycare, scam, Schumer, sellouts, single-payer healthcare, Six Things I Think, Socialism, Trumpcare

Editor’s note: my shoulder is still a painful mess this morning and as a result, today’s Brief Thought is going to be a short and sweet look at how the Democratic Party is already failing to fully capitalize on the embarrassing failure of Trumpcare and a Republican government that is clearly in complete disarray:

Sources:

Trump tastes failure as U.S. House healthcare bill collapses

How the GOP health care bill failed without a vote

Democrats celebrate collapse of GOP health care bill on social media

Dems can’t stop happy-tweeting about Republicans’ failed health-care bill

Poll: Most Americans want to replace Obamacare with single-payer

With Epic GOP Failure, Dems Urged to Go Bold with Medicare-for-All

Hillary Clinton: Single-payer health care will “never, ever” happen

Note: if you’re having trouble reading the above info-graphic, just right click on it and select “view this image” to pop out a larger version. As always please feel free to share this image anywhere you like; there’s a good chance even your Republican friends and family secretly understand that single-payer, public healthcare would benefit all Americans – nobody in Topeka Kansas is going to shed a tear for bloodsucking medical insurance companies either.

As I mentioned in the above info-graphic, there are a lot of good reasons to be happy this morning; the heartless Trump administration was dealt a humiliating blow, Paul Ryan might get fired for looking like a jackass and millions of people went to bed last night knowing that whatever meager, government-subsidized medical coverage they could afford wouldn’t be torn out from under them in the morning. Furthermore, it is simply impossible to overestimate the political value of exposing a Republican party that waged four elections on the promise to immediately repeal Obamacare and yet couldn’t even bring the matter to a vote now that they control the House, Senate and Presidency.

It is also undeniable however that the Democratic party’s commitment to satisfying for-profit medical insurance companies first and foremost is in many ways letting the GOP off the hook here. Sure Trump and Paul Ryan look terrible, but everyone else in the party has someone else to blame and now nobody has to actually deal with the fallout that passing the disastrous American Health Care Act would have lead to. Frankly, I’m not sure most Republican politicians actually hate the Affordable Care Act all that much anyway; after all, Obamacare was based on a the healthcare plan Republican Mitt Romney installed in Massachusetts – which in turn speaks as to why it’s as much an attempt to bribe the US health insurance industry as it is an effort to provide quality healthcare to all Americans.

The really frustrating part here is simply that last night could have been so much more rewarding for both the Democratic party and the American people. If Democrats had simply used this opportunity to get behind single-payer healthcare, they could have become instant favorites to retake the House in 2018 and potentially deal the scrambling GOP a long-term, crippling blow. That’s what a party that cared about it’s constituents and wanted to win the next election would do – the fact that the Democrats were happy to score easy points against Trump and Ryan while protecting the insurance companies that fill their coffers, makes it clear that they still have little interest in either.