Health care bill monster

I sat down prepared to write about the executive order on “religious freedom” signed by President Donald Trump on Thursday, not coincidentally the National Day of Prayer. There was reason to believe that the order would do significant damage to LGBTQ rights, but when the text of the order was finally published it appeared much of the teeth had been removed from it.

There are problems with the executive order, but all the air in the room was quickly monopolized by the vote on health care. In a matter of days, Trump and the GOP pushed through a new, even more monstrous health care bill than the last attempt, winning a party-line vote of 217 to 213, despite the fact that few of the people who voted yes for it even actually read it, or that the Congressional Budget Office hadn’t had time to release a fiscal study of its impact. Both of those mark major violations of past campaign and political promises by the same Republican lawmakers who voted to pass it, including its champion, Rep. Paul Ryan.

Silly me, I’d thought we might be safe for at least another few months after the last failed attempt to gut the Affordable Care Act. After all, Republicans needed time to put together an actual replacement plan, something they’d neglected to do in all their years of obstruction and opposition to Obamacare. Sweeping policy changes that account for a major chunk of our national economy really ought to take serious time to construct.

Instead, they shoved through a downright diabolical bill to quite literally eliminate insurance coverage for some 20 million Americans in order to cut taxes for the most obscenely wealthy among us. If passed by the Senate, the bill would also re-create the pre-ACA death trap of allowing insurers to deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions. If you’re wondering what all would qualify as such, it’s a long list, but suffice to say you’re out just for being a woman, for getting pregnant, for being sexually assaulted, for getting sick, or even just for being born. Lifetime limits would come back, meaning that an infant in need of NICU care might hit their cap within weeks of being alive and never be able to get coverage again.

All of this coming from legislators among whom many claim to be “pro-life.”

There’s nothing pro-life about this bill. It is, simply put, a breathtakingly reprehensible piece of legislation aimed entirely at scoring political points while ignoring the very real dangers it poses to millions of people. The seething cynical cherry on top is the fact that Congress even inserted a provision that would exempt representatives and their staff from the new plan, allowing them to keep full coverage without restriction.

I don’t want to see lawmakers forced to go on Trumpcare with the rest of us poor plebes, though. I’d much rather we all have access to quality and unrestricted health care. Ultimately, some kind of universal coverage should absolutely become the standard.

My fervent hope now is that reason and compassion prevail in the Senate and prevent this abomination of a bill from worming its way any further toward becoming law.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, though, it’s unnerving and telling to learn just who in Congress would rather boost their personal profiles in the name of partisan gamesmanship, and who would rather actually work to prevent the needless bankrupting and death of their constituents. We all need to remember that come next election season.

Which side are you on?