Just to be Perfectly Clear, Obamacare is NOT Imploding

It isn't in a death-spiral, it isn't going to collapse in 2017 if nothing is done, it isn't going to destroy health care or anything else the republicans keep saying about it. However, there have been court fights and legislation passed by the same Republicans over the last 7 years in an effort to try and weaken the ACA and not without some measure of success.

Can the ACA be strengthened and improved? ABSO-FRICKEN-LUTLY! Expanding medicaid coverage to all states would be one way. Adding a single-payer option would be another. One thing that will not improve either the ACA or health care in general is this crap-tastic disaster the Republicans call The American Health Care Act. It is a massive give-away to the wealthy while hurting the poor, children, the elderly, and fortunately the very people that voted for Trump.

So Republican lies aside, the ACA is the best option out there and if Republicans actually cared about health care for all Americans, they wouldn't have come out with a plan that screws so many of them. Never listen to what Republicans say, watch what they do.

 

Prior to the ACA, there was a lack of will to prevent people who have treatable illnesses from dying due to an inability to pay for the treatments. After the ACA, people realized their is another way, that we, as a society, do not have to let people die of treatable illnesses, that our society has the means to prevent their deaths. Today, many of those people who are being saved by the ACA are speaking up, and their testimony is heartbreaking as they plead with so-called conservative lawmakers to stop fighting the ACA, to stop trying to repeal it, for if they do they will die.

Many of those so-called conservative lawmakers are ignoring the pleas, and are still attempting to repeal the ACA. They claim they have a solution, a new program that is better, but in truth that program was hastily put together only recently, despite the fact that many so-called republicans claimed they had a better plan for years now.

That haste is an indication of their true former intent: To repeal the ACA and leave it at that. But the ACA became popular among too many citizens for them to simply repeal it when they had the chance. By the time they did have the chance, the demand to keep it was too great for them to enact their previous plans to simply repeal it and leave it at that.

In a desperate dash, their leaders in Congress threw together a replacement bill, all while claiming they had a great plan already, when in fact they had no true replacement at all, at least not at that point.

They introduced their replacement only recently, and the response has been divided, even among their base. One part of their base wants to leave the ACA alone, to improve on it as the Democrats want to do, but that choice is anathema to republican leaders who are intent on repealing the ACA no matter what. Another part of their party wants the ACA repealed, period, end of sentence. They don't want any replacement at all, they simply hate government interference in their lives. Still another part wants to alter the replacement to suit there demands, while yet another part is running counter to them and wants THEIR demands met instead.

The problems for the republican leadership is that, no matter what they do, no matter what they change in their replacement bill, they cannot satisfy the whole party. That's the nature of the republican party's fault lines. It's a loose association of individual groups who each have their own version of what's best for the country. While they are all united in abhorring taxes and in their hatred for liberals, that unification begins to show it's cracks when other subjects are considered.

The cracks defined by the separation of beliefs within the various groups that comprise the republican party over the ACA and any potential replacement is a multi-fractured canyon of disappointment and anger. There's no way to fill in all those cracks because they run too deep and they are widening every time their leaders try.

In other words, I have serious doubts that the ACA is going to be repealed. Even if it somehow manages to pass the House, and that's a big "if", the Senate is an even bigger hurdle. republicans have only a very small majority in the Senate, and they would need to convince several Democrats to join them in repealing and replacing the ACA in order to do so. Or, they could try the "nuclear option", but neither side truly wishes to open that can of worms, and it's possible even that would fail, as a few republican Senators are not convinced that repealing and replacing the ACA is a good idea.

In any case, there may be a silver lining in this for Democrats. All the attempts to repeal the ACA over the years has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the electorate, who generally favor it. Combined with other atrocious behaviors, most notably trump and the continuing parody of an administration, the constant news of him and his cronies Russian interactions and the subsequent scandals revealed, the outlook for the Democrats is looking brighter and brighter. In the 2018 mid-terms, Democrats have a chance to regain a lot of seats in the House and Senate, maybe even gain control over them, rendering trump's goals impotent, at least most of them. And speaking of trump, 2020 may also be good for the Democrats, especially if trump is impeached for treason by then. If so, the Democrats would then most likely gain the Presidency, as well as the House and Senate, should they not have done so in 2018.

The next few years are going to be interesting. By 2021 the U.S. could rebound from the failed republican experiment and put Democrats in charge again. Doesn't that sound great, again?

 

They have to accuse everyone else of lying so that they can lie with impunity. A smarter base would have figured this tactic out a long time ago. We are not dealing with a group of rational individuals here. They can't seem to get past their own hatreds to realize how badly they are screwing themselves and everyone else along with them.

Keep letting the GOP give massive tax breaks to the wealthy so that it can trickle down to them is actually still what they believe in spite of it never, ever working. How do you fix stupid? You can't. It is an incurable birth defect that afflicts all of them.

 

There's no point in trying to fix stupid. As you say, they can't be "fixed". No amount of information, no knowledge will cause them to reconsider their point of view that liberals are the enemy, that the poor are leaches on society, that taxes are a theft of their "hard-earned" $$$.

So no, there is no "fix" for them. Instead, liberals need to find a way to get past the hurdles so-called conservative republicans have placed in the way regarding voting rights. Gerrymandering, voter-suppression laws and the republican propaganda machine are all hurdles that need to be overcome for liberals to win.

More liberals need to have access to voting, but so-called conservatives do not want that. Montana recently wanted to use mail-in ballots for a special election, and the republican party complained that doing so harms the party, essentially saying that they would lose if people were allowed to vote. That alone could tip the tide towards liberals in any general election. If people were allowed to cast their votes by mail, participation rates would rise substantially, and the costs of elections would fall.

So-called conservative republicans do not want mail-in ballots, despite the fiscally sound nature of them. The increased participation rate threatens their tentative hold on states, so they argue for state's rights where it's convenient for their party to do so.

They may be stupid in many ways, but when it comes to rigging elections in their favor, and in spreading propaganda, they know their shit. It doesn't matter to them that doing so is un-American, unethical and in some cases illegal. What matters to them is that they win elections, period.

 

Look what happened in South Dakota. The people voted special interest money out of politics and the Republicans declared a state of emergency to disembowel the law before it could take effect. Republicans aren't interested in representing the people, they are interested in representing the moneyed interests only. The idea of public service as an honorable calling is laughable on the Right. Public service is just a way to line your own pockets and help your rich friends line theirs. At least they are helping someone I guess even if it is only their country club friends. How any middle class person ever votes Republican is a mystery to me. You have to be completely stupid even consider voting for people that laugh at you behind closed doors and lie to you in public.