July 19, 2017 at 3:33 p.m.
The time to act on health care is now
The time to act on health care is now
Health care is a perfect example. When Democrats controlled Congress and the presidency, they gave us the nightmare called Obamacare, which Republicans repeatedly said they would repeal and replace.
In fact, after gaining control of Congress, the GOP did pass legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, only to have then President Barack Obama veto it.
Now, after the Republicans gained the presidency, too, you would think this would be done deal, a no-brainer. After all, the Republicans voted to repeal it before, and they promised to do so again. And they have had many years, almost seven, to prepare a replacement plan.
And yet, and yet, with complete control of the federal government, the GOP is giving us what the Democrats gave us: Obamacare. They don't have the will to repeal it, and they don't have a plan to replace it.
The new suggestion in Washington this week is just to sit by while Rome burns, that is, let the failing Obamacare system just implode on its own and then rush in as saviors, like firefighters charging into the rubble of Rome. Trump tweeted as much this week.
The problem with that is, when you wait until the city or the house burns down to fight the fire, there are going to be a lot of victims. And, by waiting for Obamacare to collapse, as it is certainly doing, there are ever more victims in its rubble.
The time to fight the fire is now, before people die, both economically and literally.
There is simply no excuse for not having a replacement plan. We all know exactly what the problem with health care is - it is the insurance companies and the mega-medical corporations and hospitals who have stifled competition in the health-care market.
By creating health-care monopolies and constricting insurance markets and limiting who can create insurance pools to buy policies, big businesses have created one of the most noncompetitive systems in the world.
Obamacare has done nothing but exacerbate this catastrophe, and we are all paying the price. There are plenty of ideas and plans that would inject competition into the health-care system, which would allow for the delivery of affordable and high-quality care. All that is lacking is the will to implement those plans and ideas.
All that is lacking is the will to fight the health-care special interests.
If the Republicans can't gather the courage to do that, they should at least hold true to the most fundamental promise they made to American voters last year - they should just repeal the law and be done with it for now.
As Sen. Rand Paul said recently, the U.S. health-care system was a mess before Obamacare, and it's a bigger mess now because the Affordable Care Act made it so much worse.
So it would be a step forward to go backward to the same system we had before, at the very least. And then start reforming the system, or replacing it, with a reasonable alternative, which means creating competition into the system.
Thus far, though, it does not seem that the GOP has the will to really pursue a true repeal-and-replace policy. And that's too bad for them, for if they don't, come the mid-term elections next year, the American voters will likely have their own repeal-and-replace plan ready.
It will be the GOP Congress that will be repealed and replaced, and they will have richly deserved it.
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