Does anyone have an idea why, exactly, Trump wants to push this Worstcare so hard, when it has significant opposition from his own party?
It probably is the legitimate best compromise Congress can come up with that is half way passable and also gets close to meeting his campaign promises.
The "significant" opposition isn't really all that significant. It's enough to keep it from passing easily, but we're talking about only a few votes margin at best. The fact that you've got ~90% of the Republican senators apparently willing to vote for it shows that it at the very least, if not popular, is possible.
It's a horrible compromise from any standpoint. It doesn't destroy the ACA completely like some want. It doesn't leave in place many of the good parts, which some want. But that's what you get with a compromise sometimes. Nobody is happy with any of it, but it's still a pill that many can just shut up and swallow because reasons. Reasons that vary from "good of the party" to "it doesn't really affect me or my people as much as others." to "My world view is skewed to the point where this actually looks better than ACA somehow, although I'm still not happy with it."
I will... with some reservations and acknowledgement that I haven't read every word of either the ACA or the AHCA... admit that the AHCA is probably better than just repealing obamacare whole cloth and leaving that void open... And this might be what some people are seeing. But... I'll use an analogy because I like making those....
Obamacare was a leaky boat. It wasn't what anyone wanted to board, but given no other choice, you'll grab onto just about anything that's floating in the ocean. Now... we've been floating along for a while on this slowly sinking boat. And half of us have been like "this isn't going to work." the other half are like "it's fine, it's fine, if we all just keep bailing it out together."
The "it's not going to work people" gain a majority, stop bailing, and start breaking chunks of wood off the boat and handing them out and shoving people into the water.
It's "fine" because we don't have to bail anymore. but some people are now hanging onto a board, others are sitting on a whole section of floating deck, and a few just end up with a splinter in their finger. An unlucky few were mistakenly handed a chunk of the now broken engine and begin to sink. Oops. We don't have to bail anymore... but we lost a few people... and now a good chunk of us are freezing, shoulder deep in the cold water, just barely hanging on. Still better than absolutely nothing... well, except those people who got the engine... and I guess the ones with the splinter, they're just annoyed because they're back where they started without a boat at all... and now their finger hurts.
Not a perfect analogy, but I can see how someone could see the options right in front of them and come up with this and push it as the "best". Eventually you're going to exhaust yourself bailing and the boat will be completely under, and everyone will be without. The truly sad part is that we aren't actually sitting in a vast ocean devoid of resources. We have the ability, with some work, and spending some money at the chandler, and maybe doing some research on how to actually build a boat... we have the ability to build a proper one, that will hold everyone and not require constant bailing by everyone. But nobody is willing to look more than 2 feet in front of them. To dangerously mix analogies,
almost like the old story of the three blind men and the elephant.TL;DR: We really need to address the elephant in the boat. Perhaps ditch the elephant, and make our own hospital ship, with blackjack and hookers.
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Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4457836 times)