Republicans, Let Us Help You

Republicans may not think that Neil Young’s 1974 song “Ambulance Blues” is relevant to healthcare debate (unless he wrote it about a bill received for taking an ambulance), but there’s a line in it that they might want to pay some attention to: “There ain’t nothin’ like a friend who can tell you you’re just pissin’ in the wind.” I wouldn’t typically consider myself their friend, and still don’t, but we should let them know they’ve been pissing right into the wind as far as any attempts at dismantling the Affordable Care Act. Their failure to get any traction on this subject goes beyond the current administration; here’s how their greatest hits play out.

In 2011, they had control of the House of Representatives and tried to pass a bill entitled the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. Aside from recommending that they consider hiring a better writer, they showed their selfishness in voting down a proposed amendment to have the repeal not take effect until most Senators and Representatives opted out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, an early sign that they don’t care if other people suffer as long as they keep their treasured plan. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional, but they tried for the 33rd time for a repeal attempt. 2013 saw An act to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was also unsuccessful. That same year, during a government shutdown, Republicans refused to pass a funding bill because it included implementation of the ACA. February 2015 saw the 67th attempt to repeal the act with a vote. In October of that year, the House voted to pass the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015, but some Republicans didn’t like it because it didn’t repeal enough, which, looking back, was clearly a sign of struggles they would have in the future. In early December, President Obama slapped a veto on an amended version and killed it for that year.

The next major effort is that by the current 115th Congress. In March, they introduced the American Health Care Act, a half-cocked attempt at putting together something that resembles a bill written by adults with functioning brains. The House couldn’t muster votes even with the leadership of wunderkind Paul Ryan, who they like to describe as a “policy wonk,” which one can assume is their way of saying he read a book once (without pictures). The bill was as bad as Paul Ryan’s Supercuts hairdo, but they wanted to try to shove it down our throats again in May. The Senate wanted to write their own version of the bill, because Republican men are insecure control freaks, and came up with the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, entirely unaware that adding the phrase “better” to something does not make it so. On July 25th we saw this get shot down in the Senate by Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who apparently care about their constituents dying as opposed to maintaining some broadly defined definition of freedom. July 27th was the birth of the Health Care Freedom Act, otherwise known as the “skinny repeal”. Collins and Murkowski were now joined by John McCain in voting it down, ostensibly because McCain wanted to put out the dumpster fire that is Mitch McConnell’s ego. Finally, this month saw Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana step forward to carry the torch. Being from two progressive, healthy states, they were the perfect people to write a new bill. Senator Cassidy, in fact, specialized in liver ailments, a fitting skill as most Republican Senators probably wanted to drink themselves to death after they failed to garner enough votes and McConnell pulled the plug on it yesterday.

The obvious question is when their next attempt at repealing healthcare will be, a question none of us have the answer to but that we can assume could be anytime in the next five minutes. If they do decide to try it again, maybe one of their interns can give “history of repeal and replace” a quick Google search, and they can see that it’s a waste of time. There will be a fight every time they write shitty legislation trying to get rid of a program that quite literally means people live or die, but they don’t have anything to support it other than muttering “America” or “freedom” and calling all of their friends in the insurance industry. If there’s any disease we should stop treating, it’s whatever pre-existing condition leads them to think their next try at this won’t be a total failure.