Obamacare in the crosshairs
Donald Trump is coming after the health care of millions of Americans–again.
Having lost the fight in Congress, Trump is trying to get the courts to drive a lethal stake through the heart of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Popularly referred to as Obamacare, the ACA reversed the long trend toward an ever-increasing percentage of Americans without health insurance. As more and more private employers declined to provide health coverage to their workers to cut costs and maximize profits, many employees found private health insurance unaffordable. Driven by relentless stockholder pressure and astronomical pay for executives, businesses of all sizes engaged in a race to the bottom, gutting health care, retirement and other benefits.
Under Obamacare, in contrast, 20 million people who had previously lacked health insurance acquired it, many through Medicaid expansion. Many more would have acquired it but for the fierce Republican campaign in Congress to make Obamacare as unworkable as possible in order to have an argument to kill it. Meanwhile, an even more perverse thing was happening in Republican-controlled states, which refused to accept virtually free federal dollars to avoid expanding Medicare.
Now, a judge in an especially red area of crimson Texas has ruled that Obamacare is unconstitutional even though years ago the Supreme Court found that the ACA is constitutional. The case is now before an appeals court, but Trump’s Justice Department has jumped in to argue against the appeal. What is going on here?
It seems apparent that Trump is hoping that the current Supreme Court, packed with right-wing judges appointed mainly by him but also by previous GOP administrations, will reverse the original ruling. This also helps explains another puzzle, why Trump has been regularly and viciously attacking the late Senator John McCain. McCain cast the decisive vote that sunk the Congressional campaign to repeal the ACA. Among other things, the president keeps repeating that he is no fan of McCain.
I am no fan of McCain’s hawkish, conservative politics. But John McCain had more courage and integrity in one strand of hair than Trump has in his entire bloated body.
Trump has been disparaging McCain since long before the ACA vote, McCain’s finest hour in a storied life. Why? McCain fought for his country and nearly died for it, albeit in a bad and misguided cause. Still, most Americans consider him a hero, and I do too despite my abhorrence for the American intervention in Vietnam.
McCain was one of legions of young men the Cold Warriors that at that time this country lied to. No shame in that. What is shameful and outrageous is for a man who supported the war but found the flimsiest of excuses not to attack McCain’s memory out of spite and vengefulness. A racist, a liar and a cheat, as his former lawyer described him to Congress—and, I add, a coward—is in no position to cast aspersions on a much bigger and better man. But he does it anyway. Zero decency. That’s Donald Trump.
With Kavanaugh and company on the Supreme Court, there’s no telling what the final outcome of the struggle over Obamacare will be. What is clear is that, despite massive right-wing propaganda, the ACA has a much higher approval rating among Americans than Donald Trump’s health care policies or Donald Trump himself. Health care was the top reason Republicans lost big in the midterm elections, and it will cost them again.
That’s only one reason Trump will have a hard time winning reelection in 2020. A perfect storm is gathering that could sweep him away. The economic cycle has not been abolished. We are overdue for a recession, and there are ominous signs in the air that one is on the way. With Brexit, the chaos in Italy, the rebellion in France and the new American tariffs, the European economy is on the brink of a downturn. At home, economic growth is slowing, and some of the same precursors that struck in 2007-2008 are emerging. Wall Street is playing games again.
Last time a housing bubble produced massive amounts of unpayable debt, the main trigger of that crisis. Now, there is a massive overhang of student debt that is also essentially unpayable and has an adverse effect on new home and car sales. It also presents a major roadblock to a whole generation of young people as they enter the job market. This is a group that always disliked Donald Trump; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is exceptional, but she is not as much an outlier in her views as Republicans would like to believe. The difference is that she has chosen to be a participant in politics rather than a bystander. Maybe this time, those young people who seldom participate in politics will be angry enough to come out and vote.
Meanwhile, Trump deludes himself and the people by saying we have the best economy ever. He is like a man falling from the top floor of a New York skyscraper who, as he goes by the 50th floor, yells out that everything is fine.
