Healthcare Passes in the House- a First Step in the Fulfillment of a Promise

Healthcare Passes in the House- a First Step in the Fulfillment of a Promise

The first step in the ultimate repeal and replacement of ObamaCare took place Thursday in the House of Representatives, as House Republicans just managed to eke out a victory with barely a vote to spare, thanks in large part to the leadership of President Donald Trump.

It was Trump who sat down with two key Republican holdouts, Missouri’s Billy Long and Michigan’s Fred Upton, and it was Trump who then asked Rep. Upton to draw up and submit an amendment addressing their reservations. This amendment would fund an additional $8 billion to supplement premiums for those with pre-existing conditions, as part of the revised American Health Care Act of 2017. In doing so, Trump’s last-minute effort proved pivotal in surpassing the 216 required votes necessary for the bill to advance to the United States Senate.

Twenty House Republicans opposed the measure, along with the entire Democrat caucus who then sang a jeering “na-na-na-na…hey, hey… goodbye,” when the deciding vote was cast, predicting a Republican loss in the next mid-term election of 2018. Such crass and immature behavior by House Democrats reveals their real level of concern for the very real challenges Americans who have been thrust into the individual market. This market has witnessed soaring premiums and ridiculous five-figure minimums, effectively separating the insured from actual healthcare. Just yesterday, the last insurer for the state of Iowa (save for three of its 97 counties) pulled out of the individual market, and then the same thing happened in Virginia where Aetna announced their own pullout for 2018 individual market coverage.

The stubbornness of Democrats to insist upon the continuation of ObamaCare, for merely partisan purposes, when everyone knows the certainty of its impending collapse, is at very least reprehensible in and of itself. Furthermore, Democrats know all-too-well that Republicans, in passing this measure, have supposedly spared them of taking the fall for its impending failure, which further reveals the dark nature of Democrat obstructionism. For seven years, they did nothing to fix the short-comings of their own legislation, and now deride Republican efforts to come to the assistance of the American people, who are unable to secure either healthcare or coverage.

The fact that more individuals chose to take the tax penalty for not signing up for ObamaCare, than those who actually signed up for the program, shows just how flawed ObamaCare was from the start. Its replacement would end such punitive tax burdens, along with a couple dozen other considerable taxes associated with Obamacare, and the total tax savings of the Republican plan are estimated at $1 trillion dollars. In addition, the elimination of many of ObamaCare’s burdensome regulations, including the individual and employer mandates, can only serve to boost business expansion and employment so sorely needed today. ObamaCare’s effect in reducing the number of permissible hours of work per week for employees, in order to exempt their employers of the requirement to provide coverage, has only served to increase the number of part-time, low-paying jobs Americans must work, in order to make ends meet- often resulting in Americans working many more hours than they would have with higher-paying, full-time jobs. In essence, ObamaCare resulted in more Americans losing employer-provided health insurance, a fact seldom mentioned in news reports regarding same.

Almost immediately, the same mainstream media who had said that Republicans could not pass this legislation began predicting that it would ultimately fail in the Senate. In order to get just another opportunity to appear on camera, and thereby attempt to re-assert his own relevance, anti-Trump Senator John McCain (R-AZ) voiced his “disapproval” of the measure, while his buddy Lindsey Graham (R-SC) poo-pooed its chances for Senate passage. In the end though, both are just blustering. Imagine, once the Senate marks up and makes changes to the House bill, any Republican senator standing up for ObamaCare, by opposing the passage of what will eventually become its repeal and replacement, and then going back to their constituents and trying to explain that one…it won’t ever happen.

The House bill is far from perfect, but it is far better than its original version, and loads better than the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). The Republicans’ American Health Care Act, while technically not repealing ObamaCare, still only requires a simple majority in the Senate to pass and, though it may not fix all that is wrong with ObamaCare, is a good place to start in eventually tearing it down. More importantly, it vouchsafes the President’s campaign promise, and the seven-year promise of Republicans, to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Step-by step, they are on their way to doing just that.

Yet, in the end, Americans will have to face the ultimate choice of two very different paths for healthcare in this country. Either the country will continue in the direction of universal, single-payer coverage for all, which is what the Democrats ultimately seek, or the country will insist on its government removing itself entirely from everything related to health care. After all, the most certain way to reduce the costs of healthcare would be to achieve the entire elimination of health insurance, altogether, but in the likely absence of that ever happening, the ongoing battle of how best to provide healthcare will remain as the nation’s most challenging and difficult domestic issue in the years ahead.

In a not-entirely-unrelated development, yesterday also witnessed President Trump signing an executive order on religious freedom, bringing to an end enforcement of the 1954 Lyndon Johnson Amendment which proscribed churches and other religious organizations from participating in political campaigns and restricted their endorsement of specific candidates running for public office. Selectively enforced, given the number of churches which openly endorsed Barack Obama’s candidacy in 2008 and 2012, the decision to end its enforcement by the IRS levels the playing field of all denominations by ensuring the first amendment rights of free speech from the pulpit. No longer will religious organizations, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, be subject to healthcare regulations which run in opposition to the tenets of Catholic doctrine, and the same freedoms will be extended to other such organizations representing all faiths.

President Trump is off to a very good start in leading House Republicans to pass that most difficult legislation regarding health insurance. His determination to see it through the House will require the same amount of effort to see it through the Senate. More importantly, the die has been cast on how to proceed with tax reform legislation- the next big item on Trump’s domestic agenda. He has already started the process by drawing up and submitting his own framework for tax reduction and reform, and reports indicate House Republicans are moving it along in their own chamber. Given the fact that, while tax reform is yet another difficult and complicated issue with which to grapple, how Trump and the Republicans ultimately get it done will no doubt follow the same modus operandi. The Democrats will utilize the same level of demagogy to oppose this, but their own deteriorating credibility- ever more obvious to the American people- will only serve to ensure another Trump victory on this, and in the election of 2020.

Then will be the time for all of us to sing, “na-na-na-na…hey, hey…goodbye.”

 

-Drew Nickell, 5 May 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

now available at Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Bending-Your-Ear-Collection-Essays/dp/1633932907?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:

http://www.drewnickell.com

Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2