The Lessons Learned From GOP's Health Plan Failure

(Cartoon image is by Michael Ramirez in the Weekly Standard.)

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (pictured) believes there are some lessons to be learned from the failure of Republicans to replace Obamacare with their own plan. He says:

6 big lessons from the Republican’s failure to replace the Affordable Care Act:

1. Trump is a lousy dealmaker. He blundered into a political fiasco, apparently believing he could win over recalcitrant Republican members of Congress simply by popping over to Capitol Hill. 

2. Paul Ryan is an even worse rightwing ideologue than we knew. He came up with a truly awful bill that couldn’t be justified on any ground at all. It just shifted $600 billion from the poor and working class to the rich. 

3. Republicans don’t know how to govern. They’ve been out of power so long all they can do is oppose. They lack the mental and emotional capacities to craft and sell large-scale initiatives that advance the public good. 

4. When it comes to health-care policy, there is no workable conservative alternative to the Affordable Care Act. In fact, the only workable alternative at all is a single-payer healthcare plan, which present-day Republicans couldn’t possibly stomach. 

5. Americans need and want maternity coverage, mental-health benefits, prescription drugs, pediatric services, lab tests, and the other things included on the list of essential health benefits under the Act. When moderate Republicans in places like New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania heard that these services might be eliminated under the amended legislation, they abandoned it in significant numbers. It was their desertion that ultimately killed the bill. 

6. The larger lesson here is that conservatism failed and social democracy won. Most Americans fall into the latter camp, even though the people who run our government don't. 

What do you think?