An unhealthy habit

The third, or is it fourth, version of the Republicans’ attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was officially unveiled late last week by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It is expected to cause __ million Americans to lose their health coverage.

While delivering a windfall in tax cuts to the wealthy, $__ billion over a decade, Medicaid, which provides health coverage to the poor and disabled, will be slashed by a whopping $__ billion over the same period.

Older, middle-income Americans will be hit especially hard, as tax credits far smaller than Obamacare subsidies will cover a mere __% of the cost of coverage.

And despite President Trump’s promises to offer terrific coverage to all, and lower premiums, and lower deductibles, deductibles are projected to spike by __%, and premiums by __%.

The blanks above, or some of them at least, will soon be filled in with the nonpartisan projections of the Congressional Budget Office and other independent analysis. They’ll be lower or higher by a bit than Plan A and Plan B, the dials turned in a desperate attempt to win over this senator or that.

The particulars are at this point immaterial. The fundamental model remains the same:

Squeeze programs serving the poor, return billions to the wealthy and shrink decent-sized subsidies for insurance into small tax credits.

Meantime — and this last part is new, courtesy of Sen. Ted Cruz — enable younger, healthier adults who think they don’t need insurance to buy into cheap plans that only cover the bare minimum, without protection for preexisting conditions.

That might sound sane, until you realize the effect of millions of people opting out of the larger insurance pool is raising costs for everyone else.

For wavering moderates who rightly worry about the evisceration of Medicaid, McConnell is trying, well, bribery — a $182 billion slush fund supposedly to help states lower premiums. In fact, the health and human services secretary would have the authority dole out cash however he chooses.

There’s also $45 billion to combat opioid addiction — a figure that Ohio Gov. John Kasich likens to spitting into the ocean.

McConnell has abandoned the notion that this is a debate about health care. Nobody, and especially not the President, is arguing the virtues of this legislation on the merits.

This repeal is transparently a bid for Trump’s Republican Party to save face before its base.

Or, as Trump said last week, “He’s got to pull it off. Mitch has to pull it off.”

We repeat: The Affordable Care Act is flawed. But it is not fundamentally broken. It demands intelligent fixes by a serious Congress.

Here, instead, by hook or by crook, the blankety-blank Congress is demanding a blanketyblank victory — something the big and powerful man in charge can call a win that is, in indisputable fact, a huge loss for millions of ordinary Americans.