Mar 242017
A few thoughts on the demise of the American Health Care Act:
- Paul Ryan is not a smart man. As others have noted, he is a dumb guy’s idea of a smart man. He actually thought he could pass a bill in a month without doing any of the hard work necessary to pass major legislation. He didn’t reach out to stakeholders. He didn’t hold public hearings. He barely allowed any debate on the bill. And I’m not even getting into the substance of the bill, which was breathtaking in its cruelty.
- Trump is low-energy! Seriously, he couldn’t be bothered to focus on the task of realizing a major campaign promise for more than a few weeks. He claims to be more interested in tax reform, but that’s likely to be even more arduous than his failed attempt to repeal the ACA. He’ll need to be able sell tax reform on its merits, but he’s shown no capability for this.
- The voices of constituents matter. If you called your representative or senator, if you showed up at a town hall meeting, if you wrote a letter to your newspaper, then you played a part in the demise of this terrible bill.
- The fight is not over. Republicans will try to sabotage the ACA through regulatory actions, funding cuts, and other shenanigans. People of good conscience must be prepared to fight any efforts to diminish the effectiveness of the ACA. We must also offer practical solutions to fix the shortcomings of the ACA. And maybe we can even find bipartisan consensus on those fixes.
Now the effort should be to make fixes, actual fixes to the act. But as you say the shenanigans will start, or continue. I will not rest easy with DT at the helm.