Philip Bump/WaPo:
This is not the health-care bill that Trump promised
“Make no mistake,” the president said at one point, “this is a repeal and a replace of Obamacare, make no mistake about it. Make no mistake.” The bill would significantly alter it, but it isn’t a repeal-and-replace of the Affordable Care Act. Of all of Trump’s pledges on health care, though, that was his most consistent. “Repeal and replace” summarized the true extent of his desired outcome so fully that it was the only health-care point articulated on Stephen K. Bannon’s infamous whiteboard. No details about the repeal. None about the replace. Just … Repeal. Replace.
All Trump needs to do now is to convince America that this is what the AHCA does. Or at least, convince himself.
Paul Waldman/WaPo:
I won’t mince words. The health-care bill that the House of Representatives passed this afternoon, in an incredibly narrow 217-to-213 vote, is not just wrong, or misguided, or problematic or foolish. It is an abomination. If there has been a piece of legislation in our lifetimes that boiled over with as much malice and indifference to human suffering, I can’t recall what it might have been. And every member of the House who voted for it must be held accountable
Reihan Salam/Slate:
Moderate Republicans Are Wimps
Why did the House GOP caucus pass a terrible health care bill? Because middle-of-the-road members don’t stand for anything.
Did moderate Republicans make it clear they’d only vote for the AHCA if the premium subsidies were more generous for people who might otherwise have been too poor or too sick to buy decent coverage? Nope. They didn’t do this even though the Freedom Caucus likely would have gone along with such an approach. Did they demand that the tax cuts for the rich that are embedded in the AHCA be dialed way back if the bill was going to trim the growth of future Medicaid spending? Not a chance. Moderate Republicans often represent relatively affluent districts, and their voters in these districts are more affluent still. Nevertheless, they are vulnerable to accusations of heartlessness, which in a good year for Democrats could be enough to drive them out of office.
Going forward, the Tuesday Group needs to be more than just a collection of swing-seat Republicans who are afraid of their own shadows. If the Freedom Caucus stands for shrinking government, the Tuesday Group should stand for a cause of its own, like modernizing government for the 21st century (or some other appropriately moderate-sounding cliché). Don’t just roll over when Ryan comes looking for your votes. Craft a coherent program and insist on shaping legislation.
Tom Moran/nj.com:
Mark the moment. Because this is really the starting gun of the Trump Era. This isn't just an insulting tweet, a money grab by Trump or his family, or even an executive order to keep dirty coal alive.
This is the real thing. People without insurance die before their time. They go bankrupt and delay care for their children. When their sickness is too much to ignore, a moment that comes for us all, they get care in hospital ERs, driving up costs for everyone.
NY Times:
But by leaning on members to vote for a bill that many fear will leave millions of people unable to afford health care, Mr. Ryan has exposed moderate Republicans to withering political attacks. This is especially true in the roughly two dozen districts represented by Republicans where Hillary Clinton prevailed over Mr. Trump in November, but it is also the case in places where the Affordable Care Act’s popularity has been increasing.
WaPo:
Anti-vaccine activists spark a state’s worst measles outbreak in decades
“I thought: ‘I’m in America. I thought I’m in a safe place and my kids will never get sick in that disease,’ ” said Salah, 26, who has lived in Minnesota for more than a decade. Growing up in Somalia, she’d had measles as a child. A sister died of the disease at age 3.
Salah no longer believes that the MMR vaccine triggers autism, a discredited theory that spread rapidly through the local Somali community, fanned by meetings organized by anti-vaccine groups. The advocates repeatedly invited Andrew Wakefield, the founder of the modern anti-vaccine movement, to talk to worried parents.
Immunization rates plummeted and, last month, the first cases of measles appeared. Soon, there was a full-blown outbreak, one of the starkest consequences of an intensifying anti-vaccine movement in the United States and around the world that has gained traction in part by targeting specific communities.
Seth Masket/Vox:
The logic of voting for a hated bill
This was the right call if you’re more scared of primary activists than of general election voters.
HuffPost:
As Republicans Cheered Obamacare’s Repeal, The Law’s Beneficiaries Worried About Survival
“I keep wondering why they want to kill me.”
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
The GOP’s strange, ugly strategy of rushing today’s vote will backfire. Here’s how.
House GOP leaders are confidently forging ahead with the repeal-and-replace vote today, and they are laughing off questions as to why they would go forward despite their willfully premature and dim understanding of how the measure might impact millions of Americans and one-sixth of the U.S. economy. They are doing this without seeing a nonpartisan analysis of their new bill from the Congressional Budget Office — which will, conveniently, allow them to conceal the full truth of what they are voting for from their constituents.
But this is likely to backfire. Here’s why: The Congressional Budget Office score of the bill is coming, anyway — as soon as next week. And it will land after an untold number of House Republicans have committed themselves to the bill.
John Gartner/USA Today:
Donald Trump's malignant narcissism is toxic: Psychologist
Much has been written about Trump having narcissistic personality disorder. As critics have pointed out, merely saying a leader is narcissistic is hardly disqualifying. But malignant narcissism is like a malignant tumor: toxic.
Psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor Erich Fromm, who invented the diagnosis of malignant narcissism, argues that it “lies on the borderline between sanity and insanity.” Otto Kernberg, a psychoanalyst specializing in borderline personalities, defined malignant narcissism as having four components: narcissism, paranoia, antisocial personality and sadism. Trump exhibits all four.
His narcissism is evident in his “grandiose sense of self-importance … without commensurate achievements.” From viewing cable news, he knows "more about ISIS than the generals” and believes that among all human beings on the planet, “I alone can fix it.” His "repeated lying," “disregard for and violation of the rights of others” (Trump University fraud and multiple sexual assault allegations) and “lack of remorse” meet the clinical criteria for anti-social personality. His bizarre conspiracy theories, false sense of victimization, and demonization of the press, minorities and anyone who opposes him are textbook paranoia. Like most sadists, Trump has been a bully since childhood, and his thousands of vicious tweets make him perhaps the most prolific cyber bully in history.
Andy Slavitt/USA Today:
There is little support for repealing the Affordable Care Act and even less for the American Health Care Act passed by the House. Only 17% of the public favored a previous similar version and the new one was uniformly opposed by patient groups and care providers. It raises premiums, guts the vital Medicaid program and, while President Trump attempted to cloud the question in recent interviews, it would break a major promise of his by removing the federal ban on insurance discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.
My Twitter feed is buzzing with stories from parents of children with disabilities and lifelong chronic illnesses. If there’s anyone who is an expert on the details of the health care system, it’s the parent of a sick child. A pediatrician relayed to me the three horrors of the Republican bill from her standpoint: patients being segregated into a high risk pool, the reintroduction of lifetime caps on insurance, and what a pre-existing condition means in the real world to her young patients — and to a parent like her. Her own son needed heart surgery that cost over $1 million as a newborn.