USA TODAY International Edition
Pipeline projects boost America’s energy security
Health care reform isn’t a branding problem or a wall you can pretend to build
The extended national argument over whether to lay a couple thousand more miles of pipe from oil field to market, in a nation already crisscrossed by tens of thousands of miles of oil pipelines, has long been overwrought. Opponents have exaggerated the environmental risks. Supporters have exaggerated the economic benefits.
President Trump, following through on a campaign promise, came down on the right side of the debate Tuesday by advancing construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, both of which had been blocked by the Obama administration.
When it comes to repealing and replacing Obamacare, many have compared Republicans to the dog that caught the car, or the ambulance.
The GOP knows better than anyone that Democrats paid a steep price for insuring millions of people. Now, after televised scenes of furious Americans rallying against repeal even before the new president took office, the party is beginning to see that uninsuring millions won’t be as much fun as slamming snout first into a bumper at full speed.
“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Donald Trump told The Washington Post a few days before he was sworn in.
You can bet no one has any idea what that actually means. That includes Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, who dodged details at a confirmation hearing Tuesday. It also includes Trump, who has yet to demonstrate that he actually knows what’s in the Affordable Care Act, let alone how he would replace it.
Health care reform isn’t a branding problem you can tweet away with strategic misspellings, huge empty promises of “something terrific” or even a meeting with Family Feud’s Steve Harvey.
Health insurance isn’t a wall you can pretend to build.
You don’t need a fact- checker to tell you that you’ve been uninsured. And there will be no President Obama to blame when Trump voters can’t pay medical bills because the insurance market is crumbling.
Here’s what Republicans won’t tell you about the mess they’ve gotten us all into:
1.
If they manage a substantive repeal of the Affordable Care Act, they probably won’t be able to replace it — ever.
If you want to cover “everybody,” you either have to establish some meaningless standard for coverage that evaporates any time you have an ailment bigger than half a hangnail, or you have to spend money — even more than the billions of dollars Republicans are eager to give back to the richest Americans.
“If you end it in three years without a replacement, what Republican is going to vote for a tax increase to fund it?” asked Sen. Bob Corker, R- Tenn. “I don’t know any.”
2. Repeal isn’t inevitable.
“Right after the election, Republicans vowed to have a repeal bill on Trump’s desk on Jan. 20,” Topher Spiro, vice president for health policy at the Center for American Progress, told me. “That timeline has already slipped, and is slipping even more as we speak.”
Senate Republicans have shown they have the simple majority needed for repeal, but several of their 52 members are reluctant to repeal without a decent replacement. That’s more than enough to create uncertainty.
3.
If Trump has an actual plan to cover everybody, Republicans would be his problem.
“Most fundamentally, ( Republicans) have no idea how to keep their promise to cover as many people as the Affordable Care Act,” Spiro said. “Expanding and maintaining coverage is not, and has never been, their goal. But they just can’t seem to come out and admit that they don’t care if people lose coverage.” Trump told The Washington
Post, “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it.” Those “circles” are better known as “The Republican Party.”
4. Repeal could weaken everyone’s insurance.
The health law removed both yearly and lifetime caps on insurance, something you only proba- bly noticed if you or a family member has had a serious illness. As Spiro notes, it also expanded free coverage of preventive services like colon cancer screening, mammograms and flu shots. And it capped what insurance companies can charge for out- of- pocket costs. All of that affects even those who get insurance at work.
5.
If a replace plan did pass, it would leave Republicans open to the fiercest attack they made on the ACA.
When they were unable to repeal the law, Republicans had the freedom to attack ACA for offering their favorite kind of insurance — high- deductible plans that force consumers to weigh price as they make medical decisions.
They are now pitching “threadbare, catastrophic coverage with enormous deductibles,” New York
Magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote. “The English, vernacular term for the kind of insurance Republican health care plans would offer is ‘ crappy.’ ”
Trump promised “something terrific.” He just didn’t explain it was a terrific mess that could end with Americans finally discovering how much they had gained, right as he takes it away.