My father always said there was no sane reason for anyone who wasn't wealthy to vote for a Republican, and nothing proves his point more than the ongoing Republican fuckery over healthcare. Here's Paul Waldman summing up the worst-case scenario, via Public Notice:
Most Americans probably don’t have a detailed grasp of what’s happening with subsidies right now, but once people start getting letters notifying them of how much their premiums are going up, it will become a much bigger issue. At the moment, according to the latest KFF tracking poll, 78 percent of Americans favor extending the subsidies — including 59 percent of Republicans. To try to win the support of Senate Democrats, Republicans have suggested they’d promise to hold a vote on extending the subsidies after the government reopens, which is very different from actually extending them.
As important as this immediate context is, we should also look past it to what Republicans might do next, however the shutdown is resolved.
There are certainly some in the GOP who would rather they could just stop worrying about healthcare. They don’t particularly care about whether people have coverage — or more properly, all the people they care about already have coverage, and they don’t much care if anyone else does. And as a political issue, it’s a loser for them.
But they still loathe the ACA, and seldom pass up an opportunity to say how horrible they think it is (“Obamacare is broken. Obamacare is a failure,” says Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso in a representative comment). Medicare is too politically insulated to touch, but they’d like to keep undermining Medicaid to kick as many people off as possible. If they could snap their fingers and eliminate the ACA marketplaces altogether, they would. And they haven’t arrived at a consensus on what the insurance system would look like in their preferred world, beyond a bunch of vacuous bromides about “choice” and “patient-centered care.”
But something is very different today than it was in 2010 or 2017. The first year of the Trump administration has blasted away all constraints on the GOP’s policy ambitions. After firing much of the federal workforce, creating an army of masked thugs to rampage through American cities, making new renewable energy projects practically illegal, and turning the Department of Justice into a Department of Revenge on Trump’s enemies, why not dismantle every bit of the Affordable Care Act?
If the answer is “Because that would be politically disastrous,” Republicans might respond that maybe it won’t be. After all, they’ve turbocharged their gerrymandering efforts to the point where it may be all but impossible for them to lose the House in 2026. And even if they are fated to lose the House, why not use the time between now and then to lay waste to everything their opponents value? Isn’t that what power is for?
When the premium increases come, they’ll blame it on Democrats: “See, we told you Obamacare is a disaster. Look what happened to your premiums! That’s why we need to get rid of it.” And keep in mind, Republicans will be able to pass another reconciliation bill — which requires only 51 votes in the Senate — next year, before the midterm elections. They might not bother to repeal the ACA once and for all next year. But don’t be surprised if they decide it’s the best and last chance they’ll have, and they can’t pass it up.
