Be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it. Well the Republicans have finally found one of their activist judges to rule the ACA unconstitutional. No more subsidized insurance, no more covering pre-existing conditions, no more coverage on your parents plan to age 25…
The one thing we will get a lot more of is, Republicans backtracking like Usain Bolt running 100 Meters in full reverse. Remember when the Democrats did this?
And remember awhile back when the Republicans lost 40 seats in the house?! This past election sent two messages. For the Republicans it said, the American people REALLY care about health care, and for the Democrats it said, the American people REALLY care about health care!
In the next few days Republicans will be screaming that they’ll protect pre-existing conditions, and you’ll hear a series of lies about new plans that offer everything and will cost almost nothing.
And the Democrats will now be emboldened to do what they’ve been trying to do since Harry Truman, real universal health care for all.
Rather than a massive tax increase and taking away great insurance plans from 10’s of millions of workers, the giant step toward Medicare for all will be to simply replace the ACA with Medicare when Democrats control the congress in 2021. It’s almost just a name change from the ACA to Medicare.
The new Medicare would offer subsidies to people wanting to buy into Medicare, with subsidies decreasing as incomes rise. There aren’t pre-existing problems with Medicare and young adults wouldn’t have to be under their parents plan, they would simply have their own heavily subsidized plan. And Medicare already has built in private insurance (part c which definitely needs reform) so people who want private insurance can get it through Medicare. And all this happens without a big tax increase.
The new Medicare will pretty much be national health insurance but instead of paying to the IRS, most people will pay directly to Medicare. It will open up all kinds of new revenue paths to expand coverage and clamp down on prescription drug prices and a lot of scams that need to be prosecuted.
If you think that the Republicans took big losses in the election because they attacked the ACA, wait until they start attacking Medicare to try and take health care away from people.
The Republicans may have gotten their wish by finding one of their fascist judges to declare the ACA unconstitutional, but they just threw the door wide open for a huge expansion of Medicare and Democrats and the American people are going to be happy to walk through it. It won’t matter how much Republicans try to back away from this now, this door is jammed open and it’s not going to close.
RESIST!