In the new age of Trump politics, you can count on a lot of alternate truth. Much of it comes from the "Wisconsin Miracle" wrought by our governor and the likes of Paul Ryan. We are about to find out if we are going to take the somewhat flawed Obamacare and replace it with the totally nonfunctional Trumpcare. If this happens we by and large have Paul Ryan to blame.
Where to start? The last time I saw the bill it appeared that the projections of taking 24 million people off of health insurance had prompted Ryan and his cohorts to declare "Only 24 million? We can do better than that. Hold my beer." Attempts to placate the far-right wing of the GOP have resulted in plans to even more severely cut back on Medicaid. The supposed plan to help out seniors from the huge increases in health care costs they will somehow have to survive has amounted to throwing in an inadequate amount of funding, and throwing the whole mess over the wall for the Senate to figure out.
In the long term of course the whole problem with this bill is that it is unsustainable. By throwing out mandatory insurance, the plan suffers from not forcing young and healthy adults to buy in to the system, therefore making the entire system unstable. Republicans have long warned about an impending "death spiral" from Obamacare. The replacement bill almost guarantees that the death spiral will happen.
So Republican house members are now faced with an interesting conundrum. They can vote for a bill that is universally hated and will cause immense hurt to many of their constituents. Or they can vote against it and receive the wrath of a vindictive party. President Trump has recently attempted to bully persuade them to vote, threatening them with being ousted in the next election. The stakes for Republicans are high, but the stakes for the rest of us are higher. Please consider contacting your representatives to demand that they do better and produce a bill that does not inflict permanent harm on their constituents. A bill that will not cause people to die.