It has been over fifty days since Donald Trump took the oath of office, and Obamacare still lives. After nearly eight years, the Republican party can finally vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and have a President who will sign their repeal. President Donald Trump claimed that Obamacare was a failure and promised to make repealing the law a top priority. Almost every single Republican in Washington DC has campaigned on the promise to repeal the law. After so many show votes, where Congressional Republicans unanimously supported repealing the Affordable Care Act, there is nothing stopping the GOP from fulfilling a campaign promise that dates back to the midterm elections of 2010. Yet nothing has happened. Is not the duty of the GOP to fulfill their promise to govern?

According to the Republican Party, the Affordable Care Act was such a terrible thing that the only way to fix it was to kill it. Never before in one of the countless show votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act did the GOP offer up a replacement bill. Prior to 2017, the Republican Party used taxpayers time and money to have one pointless repeal vote after another. It was feasible to think that the GOP had no idea on how, or any intention to, replace the Affordable Care Act. The only tactic the Republican Party knew how to enact was one of non-governance. They wanted to get rid of a law that was designed to help people. The GOP would rather go back to a time when people desperately needed help. That was the Republican Party plan on healthcare before 2017.

Unfortunately a funny thing happened when the Republicans took total control of the law making process in Washington DC. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and President-Elect Trump all started to talk about how they needed to "repeal and replace" the Obamacare. It seemed that the new power in Washington DC realized that the health care system, and the problems with it, were quite complicated. The President himself was shocked by how complex the issue was, even though he spoke about how easy the fixes would be while he was running for President. Everyone in the Republican Party started to realize that when they repealed the Affordable Care Act, they would then own it and have to deal with immediate consequences from the fallout. Millions of citizens would lose their healthcare, or see their prices skyrocket even higher. Once Obamacare is gone, the Republican Party would have to use their seats of power to steer the country out of more pressing problems. Repeal only was not an option. 

Another danger in a repeal only of the Affordable Care Act was that the GOP refused to acknowledge that the health insurance industry liked many parts of the Democratic Party's overhaul of the industry. Obamacare wanted to give more people insurance, but the federal government would pay the private insurance industry to cover the new customers. The Affordable Care Act was a transfer of money from the government to private business. Obamacare allowed the health insurance industry to go about business as usual, and have yearly guaranteed revenue from American tax dollars. Health insurance lobbyists were going to make sure that this fixed revenue stream was not going to stop.

There are also many parts of the Affordable Care Act that the health industry does not like, and this is where they have manipulated Congressional Republicans in crafting the replacement law. New customers with preexisting conditions cost a lot of money. Speaker Ryan may not understand how insurance works, but the sick are funded by the healthy in all forms of health insurance. By adding people with preexisting conditions, and little ability to make a reasonable income to cover these illnesses, the health insurance companies raised the rates on their healthy customers. If the Republican Party could get rid of the requirement to cover people with preexisting conditions, the health insurance industry could keep the rates where they are now, and not have to pay out to people with ongoing medical expenses. It may seem cold, but that was how the system worked before the Affordable Care Act. With no prexisting conditions to worry about, and being able to keep rates from going down, profits will be through the roof.

The individual mandate is another area where the health insurance companies was not benefiting. The financial penalties on not having insurance were going into the coffers of the government, and not the bank accounts of the health insurance companies. Speaker Ryan changed all of that by letting the insurance companies charge, and keep, the financial penalty for someone who let their insurance lapse. The doublespeak employed by Speaker Ryan, and Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz, said that people should have the freedom to choose healthcare or something else to their liking. Chaffetz said people should chose between an iPhone or health insurance, they cannot have both. Through Representative Chaffetz, GOP has equated a person's health and well being as a luxury item. Luxury should be expensive, and not mandated by federal law. Here the GOP and the health insurance industry are in agreement. 

Predictably, the Republican Party has used their Obamacare replacement bill as a method to help the rich, and put greater economic pressure on the middle class. There are tax cuts for those who do not need them, and financial penalties for those that cannot afford them. Programs like Medicaid and Medicare that were created to be self sustaining are being robbed to cover the fiscally irresponsible practices of the GOP in the replacement bill. Even a seemingly good idea, and one championed by Donald Trump on the 2016 campaign trail,  like being able to purchase healthcare plans offered in different states was shelved from the replacement bill because the health insurance lobbyists would not let the Republican Party put it into the proposed law. No matter what non-jacket wearing Speaker Ryan, or twitter user President Trump say, the GOP replacement bill treats healthcare as a commodity, and does nothing to help the majority of Americans.. Because of this, the healthcare industry will not lower rates, they will make a ton of money, and millions of people will lose their insurance.

The Republican Party has spent the last few years claiming that the Affordable Care Act is a terrible law that is threatening the very fabric of the American dream. They are not wrong that the law is terrible, but their replacement law takes a bad idea and makes it much worse. By not leading when they did not have the White House, the GOP never crafted a law that will help the Americans they claim to be concerned with. The Republican healthcare law, written by healthcare lobbyists, is more of the same. Corporate welfare, class division, and not solving anything, that is what the GOP is good at. Maybe if the Republican Party actually knew how to govern we would see some innovative solutions. They do not know how to govern, they only know how to create division. To the Republican Party freedom is code for denial. They care not for the well being of the average American. Their healthcare replacement bill proves this.  If the GOP knew how to govern they would understand that healthcare is a human right, not an iPhone.

RD

RD Kulik is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Is good health not a human right? Is an iPhone better than an HMO doctor? Why do we ask so many questions?  Come tell us. 

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