Repeal and Replace

Repeal and Replace (especially replace) has proved so damn difficult, nay impossible, for a really simple reason.   Because, if ever Republicans had wanted to provide “health care for all,” they would have designed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka the ACA, aka Obamacare.  And I say this not merely because Obama liked to say that it was a copy of Massachusetts’ Romney Care, but because Obamacare is really Republican thinking.

Does any real Democrat like Obamacare?  No, only elected Democrats in Washington, DC and they have their reasons.  REAL Democrats all prefer Single-Payer Medicare-for-All.  The government is the insurer, not private industry.  And everyone is covered and paid for by the taxes we pay.  Simple.  But not Republican thinking.  No, Obamacare’s true beneficiaries are private health insurance companies and Big Pharma; what a Republican Congress and White House would have designed.

It is the nature of politics that if the Democrats in power legislate Republican thinking, that particular Republican thinking changes its label to Democratic thinking.  Real students of politics, like yours truly, have always to keep on our toes for how one policy and another switches labels for no damn good reason other than … well … politics!

Good Luck to the Republicans, figuring how to replace what they would have designed themselves, with something even more … Republican.  The best they can do is to accept some Democratic thinking, call it their own – and re-label it Republican!