Republicans In Disarray After Trump Supports Killing Affordable Care Act

The current "thought" rattling around inside the empty head of Putin's useful idiot (and all- around idiot) Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump is that he now has "political capital" to spend after "Coverup General" Barr wrote his whitewash letter on the Mueller report.  As we noted yesterday, he immediately took his presumed "political capital" and handed it right back to Democrats by supporting the striking down of the Affordable Care Act, which would kill affordable health insurance for nearly 30 million Americans.

His rotted out Republican Party thought they had a powerful message going into the 2020 election: "Those socialist Democrats want pie- in- the- sky single- payer health insurance and we reasonable Republicans will just tinker around the edges to make the system better!  Freedumb!"  Now, thanks to their Very Stable Genius' decision to support striking down the ACA in toto, their party has been lashed to the gunwales of the S.S. Titanic Trump.  Gone would be coverage for pre- existing conditions;  gone would be Medicaid expansion;  gone would be subsidies for premiums and deductibles;  gone would be the safety net for nearly 30 million Americans who've come to enjoy such life- saving benefits over time.  Also gone?  Future health care savings from a system that delivered $2.3 trillion in reduced health care spending from 2010 to 2017.

The panic level for Republicans who already know what Dimbulb Donnie apparently doesn't -- that Democrats ran on protecting health care in 2018 and won big -- is sure to increase as polling continues to show that Americans don't want Republicans messing around with their health insurance.  Here's yesterday's Quinnipiac poll:

American voters say 55 - 32 percent they would prefer to improve rather than replace the health care system in the U.S. No listed group prefers replacing the health care system. 

(Single- payer has strong support (43%), but still isn't the majority opinion.)

So, the Very Stable Genius has, once again, wrong- footed the message his bad faith party wanted to ride into 2020, and (schadenfreude alert) it's causing alarm in the ranks of the sociopaths:

Over the past 24 hours, Republican officials have watched in horror as the Trump administration once again fully embraced the repeal of Obamacare, just over a year after the issue proved toxic for the party at the ballot box. [snip]

GOP officials couldn’t help but marvel at Trump’s inability to enjoy a rare grace period. “They are completely tone deaf,” texted one of the party’s top strategists. “How bout a few more victory laps on Mueller while you can get away with it? WTF is wrong with them?”

But seasoned Trump hands were hardly surprised at the rake Trump had placed his foot on. “And there’s something unusual about him stepping on a good message?” one former administration official said, laughing when asked about the timing of the announcement. [snip]

As such, the department’s new position set off alarm bells among Republicans who had spent much of the 2018 election cycle trying to alleviate voter concerns that their attempts at health care overhaul would—contrary to the likely outcomes—leave those with preexisting conditions vulnerable to the whims of private insurers. Fergus Cullen, the former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee and a critic of the party’s approach to Obamacare repeal, compared the rejoining of the debate to the famous battle-of-wits scene in The Princess Bride.

“The one,” Cullen stressed, “where he talks about the rules that you should never get into a land war in Asia.”

Meanwhile, rational people (a.k.a., the Democratic Party) will be working to strengthen the ACA, providing a sharp contrast to the sabotaging efforts of Republicans over the past few years.  Until we get a new Senate and a Democratic President, though, the ACA remains in peril and improvements such as single- payer remain a goal to be fought for.

BONUS:  An "anonymous Republican Senator" (stay spineless!) wants nothing to do with Trump's latest genius move.  Too late, jackass!  You own this.

BONUS II:  Oops.  Now it's the top Republican in the House telling Trump to back off.  You can almost smell the panic.

Trump Regime Wants Affordable Care Act Struck Down (UPDATED)

The bastards are feeling emboldened:

The Trump administration on Monday said the entire Affordable Care Act should be struck down, in a dramatic reversal.

In a filing with a federal appeals court, the Justice Department said it agreed with the ruling of a federal judge in Texas that invalidated the Obama-era health care law.

In a letter Monday night, the administration said "it is not urging that any portion of the district court's judgment be reversed." [snip]

It's a major shift for the Justice Department from when Jeff Sessions was attorney general. At the time, the administration argued that the community rating rule and the guaranteed issue requirement -- protections for people with pre-existing conditions -- could not be defended but the rest of the law could stand.

After the Justice Department took that position, federal District Judge Reed O'Connor struck down the entire law and the case is currently before a federal appeals court.

Trump and the administration repeatedly promised -- particularly leading up to the midterm election -- to protect people with less-than-perfect medical histories.

But this shift in the Justice Department's stance doubles down on stripping away all the protections that were a hallmark of the landmark heath reform law.

Overturning the law would have far-reaching consequences -- way beyond disrupting coverage for the millions of people who get their health insurance on the exchanges or through Medicaid expansion.

Obamacare saves senior citizens money on their Medicare coverage and prescription drugs. It lets many Americans obtain free birth control, mammograms and cholesterol tests. And it allows children to stay on their parents' health insurance plans until they turn 26.  (our emphasis)

The case is in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which covers judicial districts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi and is considered one of the most conservative of the 13 U.S. courts of appeals.  It's unclear, though, that the "unmoored" legal judgement by crackpot Texas Judge O'Connor, now supported by the unmoored Trump regime, will pass the smell test even with this court top- heavy with Republican appointees.  Either way, it will be appealed to the Supreme Court, especially if the law is struck down.  This is an issue that touches so many peoples' lives that it's almost inconceivable that the courts would be so mindless of the impact of scuttling health insurance for so many million Americans.  But, there's already been one jackass judge who thought nothing of it, and we all know the Republican ethos: "Afflict the afflicted, comfort the comfortable."

Health care was a major issue for voters in the 2018 mid- terms, and Democrats running for President are making health care a major issue for 2020.  If in the unlikely but possible event the ACA ("Obamacare") is struck down -- without a replacement! -- the Republicans will be handing Democrats a huge cudgel to beat them with, and rightly so. 

UPDATE:  Not standing for it --

Days before the election, Republicans aired ads pretending to defend health care.

Today, they have a new message: people don't deserve quality health care and insurance companies should discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.

We *will* fight tooth and nail. https://t.co/wD2crNucfa

— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) March 26, 2019