You know, when I come across news like this, it really makes me want to find a Republican and gouge their eyes out.
If you weren’t paying attention — and who would blame if you if you weren’t — a federal judge down in Texas struck down the Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional because it no longer includes the individual mandate.
Say what?
Okay, let’s review.
- When enacted, the Affordable Care Act included an individual mandate, which, (as I’ve repeatedly pointed out on this blog) was a Republican idea that came out of the Heritage Foundation.
- The Supreme Court has already verified the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act in a 2015 decision called King v. Burwell.
- Last year, after repeated efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed, the Republicans managed to sneak a repeal of just the individual mandate into their tax “reform” bill (which was really a tax give-away to corporations, and had nothing to do with tax reform).
- Still not satisfied, the eighteen Republican state attorneys general and two GOP governors sued, claiming that without the individual mandate, the Act is not constitutional (because the individual mandate is integral to the whole).
This is the argument that the judge in Texas bought into. Now, most legal scholars don’t think it’s a winning argument, but if the case ends up at the Supreme Court again — now with both Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh holding down the right wing of the Supreme Court — who knows WTF the court would decide.
By now it should be clear to any person with a brain that the Republicans have no plan for health care. They never had a plan. All they ever wanted to do was block Obama and keep him from having a major political victory.
Obama (in case our Republican friends have not noticed) is no longer in office. His legacy is what it is. But without the Affordable Care Act, we would go back to the days when millions upon millions of people don’t have health insurance and catastrophic health care bills become the leading cause of personal bankruptcies in the United States.
I mean, I understand scoring political points, but doesn’t there come a time when even Republicans care about the health care of ordinary Americans? Or have they become so cynical that political points is the only thing they care about.
And don’t come at me with the “Democrats are just as bad.” They’re not. It’s a false equivalency. For anyone who is willing to take their head out of their ass, they will quickly discover that it’s not the same on both sides of the aisle.
Oh, and, happy holidays!