A new development in the health care reform issue that came out around midnight. In my mind, this news is the most significant news about health care reform in the past several years.
We already knew that Americans hate the health care reform bill before Congress for a vote today. One poll by Quinnepiac University reported 3 voters are against the bill for every 1 in support. That extremely clear expression of public opinion is remarkable in politics today. Even the majority of Republicans polled oppose the bill. My own anecdotal observations of over 1,000 respondents at Wall Street Journal’s online comments indicated even more lopsided opposition to the bill.
Apparently President Trump himself insists on the House of Representatives vote on Friday (later today) even without the necessary votes to pass the bill. Trump is prepared to leave Obamacare in place and work to modify it. This is the moderate approach that I and most people who work in health care advisory roles have advocated as the most prudent public policy for the last several years.
Shortly after midnight the Wall Street Journal reported “White House budget director Mick Mulvaney delivered an ultimatum from the GOP president to a meeting of House Republicans on Thursday night: Mr. Trump was done negotiating. If the bill failed on Friday, he said, Mr. Trump would leave the 2010 health law in place and move on.” I consider this great news.
I hope that the 30 Republican House holdouts stand their ground and that the U.S. moves forward in what has always been the most prudent direction for the nation.
This tired old street fighter attitude of throwing out all the collective work of our best public policy minds to date and the result of years of open public policy process to start again from scratch needs to be recognized for what it is: political grandstanding. Surely Obamacare needs a lot of fixing. But throwing it out in favor of the new bill is a terrible idea. Let’s be clear that the new bill is far worse than what we have now and America knows it. We expressed our opinions publicly this week with the force of unified public expression against the republican House bill that America has not seen in decades. Never in our lifetime has the United States public been so overwhelmingly unified on one side of an issue.
Something that makes up 1/6 of our economy deserves more than middle-of-the-night twisted backroom dealmaking for votes. The nation was clear and strong in saying that the Republican bill is worse than Obamacare.
Kudos to the President for seeing the wisdom in this!
One poll by Quinnepiac University reported 3 respondents are against the bill for every 1 person in support. Even the majority of Republicans polled oppose the bill.
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