With the Republican attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) going down in flames Friday as Americans rallied to defend their right to healthcare, Democrats are being urged, both by experts and constituents, to seize on the moment and counter with a plan that will truly provide coverage for all.
Uproar over the GOP’s American Health Care Act (AHCA), which was estimated to strip 24 million people of their healthcare by 2026, prompted a political firestorm as it drove voters across the nation to town halls and local legislative offices to demand that House Republicans vote against the bill.
After the White House called on House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) to withdraw Friday’s scheduled vote (after an aggressive lobby effort on the part of both President Donald Trump and Ryan), many are looking to what happens next.
Though the Republican narrative that Obamacare is “imploding” has been proven to be an unfounded talking point, The Week‘s Ryan Cooper argued Friday that Democrats “shouldn’t sit idly by and wait for Republicans to slowly bleed Obamacare to death by other means.”
“They need a counter-offer,” Cooper writes, “one that’s more compelling than the creaky status quo. They need a single-payer, Medicare-for-All plan.”
Similarly, RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United (NNU), told Common Dreams that ultimately Democrats “are fighting for an unacceptable status quo,” noting that a private insurance market will always prove to be “unaffordable.”
In a press statement she expanded on this idea:
Dr. Carol Paris, president of Physicians for National Health Program (PNHP), which has long-advocated for single-payer system, said Friday’s failure by the Republican Party to pass their “slash and burn” healthcare bill “presents a unique opportunity to move beyond” a profit-based system.
Though Paris acknowledged the GOP plan would have “pushed millions more Americans off their health insurance, sending the rates of medical bankruptcy and preventable deaths skyrocketing,” she said the shortcomings of the ACA should not be ignored.
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“The ACA left 29 million Americans uninsured and channeled billions of taxpayer dollars to a patchwork of wasteful private insurers, each one skimming off its own share of administrative costs and profit that should have been spent on patient care,” Dr. Paris noted. “Let’s clear the drawing board—it’s time to adopt a simple, commonsense approach to national health care.”
“Let’s clear the drawing board—it’s time to adopt a simple, commonsense approach to national health care.”
—Dr. Carol Paris, Physicians for National Health Program
Pointing to the collapse of the GOP’s attempt at reform, DeMoro says it’s clear their party has no viable pathway towards a solution. “The Republicans are ideologically split it appears,” she said. “Trump is trying to maintain that everyone should have healthcare and the cost should go down—that solution, and the only possible solution is Medicare-for-All.”
In a Friday press statement, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) echoed this call. “We have known for years that the only true healthcare reform that will work is a single-payer system where we take national responsibility for the health of our nation,” he said. “Now that this vote is over, I hope we can return to a serious and sensible discussion of strengthening our healthcare system and the improving the health of all Americans.”
In addition to Medicare-for-All being “quite clearly the best universal health-care policy option for the United States,” The Week‘s Cooper also observed that “Obamacare did not finish the job of achieving universal health care, and this is a good chance to move the ball forward.”
The AHCA, Cooper continues, “is extraordinarily unpopular because it takes coverage and subsidies away from people, and a majority believe that it should be the government’s responsibility to make sure everyone is covered. Fundamentally, Medicare is very popular, a fact only partially covered up by generations of red-baiting and duplicitous austerian propaganda.”
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