<The Highwayman: "Christmas For The People">
Trumpcare is dead, for now. As we saw last month, on live TV, John McCain's (R-AZ) dramatic "thumbs" down gesture on the Senate floor finally scuttled his party's effort to strip millions of their dearly-won health insurance -- whether they owed it to the Affordable Care Act itself, or living in a Medicaid expansion state (like me). The bats have been forced back into the abyss, leaving Trumpcare to join the love bead, the Nehru jacket, the pet rock, and the Sears cocktail dress in the Hall of Historical Japes.
Fittingly, for me, the so-called "skinny repeal" psycho circus (July 27-28) coincided with a medical procedure -- like Trump's election, when I underwent an emergency tooth extraction the morning after, as I've already written here:
Fittingly, for me, the so-called "skinny repeal" psycho circus (July 27-28) coincided with a medical procedure -- like Trump's election, when I underwent an emergency tooth extraction the morning after, as I've already written here:
https://ramennoodlenation.blogspot.com/2016/12/lifes-little-injustices-take-ix-month.html
The night before the skinny repeal psychodrama unfolded, I underwent a vascular procedure that had eluded me for a decade, due to my uninsured status. Basically, I needed to close a vein or two. It wasn't life-threatening, but the doctor told me that -- had I waited much longer -- I'd surely start feeling worse, since blood had been pooling in my legs, and feet...not snaking back up to the groin, as Nature intended.
So I laid down on the table, and got the job done. I didn't feel any pain, aside from a half-dozen pokes of the doctor's needle. Naturally, my inner thigh felt a little tender afterwards, but all that's ebbed away as I sit here writing. Needless to say, I feel better than I've felt in ages. And it didn't cost me a dime (at least, I haven't seen a bill yet).
However, without my Medicaid card's surprise appearance in my mailbox a couple months ago, my surgery would never have happened. I can't even count, over the last decade, how many workarounds I investigated...from applying for charity care via the local hospital, to the GoFundMe route, and selling off everything I owned. Among other options.
That being said, the warped course that the health debate took -- from the House Republicans' equally ill-starred effort, to the various Senate alternatives cobbled together in those secret meetings, and "working" lunch breaks -- should spike any notions of the "adults in the room" restraining Trump and his ultra-right acolytes. Look no further than veteran shapeshifters like Lindsay Graham (D=SC), who breathlessly denounced the "skinny repeal" effort for the TV cameras...only to vote for it hours later.
We heard equally tortured volleys of verbal gymnastics from so-called moderate GOPers like Shelly Moore Capito (WV), Dean Heller (NV), and Rob Portman (OH), who offered varying reservations about Trumpcare's impact on hospitals and vulnerable constituencies, like people with disabilities...only to cave in, as Graham did, and join their fellow "adults" in sending "skinny repeal" down the conveyor belt with a hearty shove.
Heller's example is especially pathetic, as we watched him zig (first, opposing the Senate's original Better Reconciliation Act as "bad for Nevada," then agreeing to allow to debate on it), and finally, zag (with a few more scripted verbal reservations)...before his knees buckled, and he, too, joined the "adults" on their skinny repeal stampede.
Heller's attempt to play every possible end against the middle smacks of General Friedrich Fromm's actions, as portrayed in Valkyrie. For those who don't know their war history, Fromm is the guy who declined to take part in the July 20, 1944 bomb plot against Adolf Hitler, but held out the possibility of joining the conspirators later...but only after getting proof of the dictator's demise.
Confronted with the opposite outcome, Fromm hurriedly moved to execute the ringleaders, an act that didn't fool his Nazi paymasters. He, too, wound up executed in March 1945 (having been stripped of his military status the previous -- though, out of deference to it, Hitler allowed him to be shot, rather than being slowly strangled from a loop of piano wire -- lucky guy, eh?).
Senator Heller hasn't seen the movie, I guess.
If nothing else, the near-success of all this frenetic backroom maneuvering is testimony to the siren song of groupthink -- although, funnily enough, it didn't sway Senators Susan Collins (ME), or Lisa Murkowski (AK), who staked out their opposition from the beginning, and -- unlike their tin-eared, tone-deaf colleagues -- showed signs of actually doing their homework, and listening to their residentes' concerns.
Time will tell whether the political will exists to fix the Affordable Care Act's well-documented warts (which Collins and Murkowski repeatedly pointed out, to anyone who cared to listen).. However, the failure of Trumpcare also proves that the resistance to it -- and whatever equally ill-thought-out initiatives fly off the president's desk -- is alive and well. Without so many millions of us taking the time -- whether it involved marching, picketing, or trying to track down a fugitive Senator or Congressman, ducking their constituents -- we might already have been bemoaning our return to the Dark Ages (as in, 20 to 50 million newly uninsured Americans, depending on which estimate you believed).
I will remember both those nights -- my procedure, and the collapse of Trumpcare -- as long as I live and breathe. I couldn't help but feel emotional after the impact of McCain's gesture sunk in. I'd been working late, as usual, which meant I kept the TV on. Due to the camera angles CNN was using, however, what happened wasn't immediately clear. Of course, the meaning quickly became clear enough, especially after the networks replayed that footage --- which prompted me to tell people: "This is why we do this. This is why we fight so hard to change things."
Of course, plenty of other fights loom ahead. But, for me, the biggest takeaways come down to two points: first, the system worked, for a change. A bad idea remained a bad idea, and stayed on the cutting room floor. The second is an expression attributed to Abraham Lincoln, one that Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi liked to quote when the GOP cranked up the first of its zombie healthcare bills last spring: "Public sentiment is everything." If you want to explain why Trumpcare tanked, I couldn't think of a better epitaph.. --The Reckoner
The night before the skinny repeal psychodrama unfolded, I underwent a vascular procedure that had eluded me for a decade, due to my uninsured status. Basically, I needed to close a vein or two. It wasn't life-threatening, but the doctor told me that -- had I waited much longer -- I'd surely start feeling worse, since blood had been pooling in my legs, and feet...not snaking back up to the groin, as Nature intended.
So I laid down on the table, and got the job done. I didn't feel any pain, aside from a half-dozen pokes of the doctor's needle. Naturally, my inner thigh felt a little tender afterwards, but all that's ebbed away as I sit here writing. Needless to say, I feel better than I've felt in ages. And it didn't cost me a dime (at least, I haven't seen a bill yet).
However, without my Medicaid card's surprise appearance in my mailbox a couple months ago, my surgery would never have happened. I can't even count, over the last decade, how many workarounds I investigated...from applying for charity care via the local hospital, to the GoFundMe route, and selling off everything I owned. Among other options.
That being said, the warped course that the health debate took -- from the House Republicans' equally ill-starred effort, to the various Senate alternatives cobbled together in those secret meetings, and "working" lunch breaks -- should spike any notions of the "adults in the room" restraining Trump and his ultra-right acolytes. Look no further than veteran shapeshifters like Lindsay Graham (D=SC), who breathlessly denounced the "skinny repeal" effort for the TV cameras...only to vote for it hours later.
We heard equally tortured volleys of verbal gymnastics from so-called moderate GOPers like Shelly Moore Capito (WV), Dean Heller (NV), and Rob Portman (OH), who offered varying reservations about Trumpcare's impact on hospitals and vulnerable constituencies, like people with disabilities...only to cave in, as Graham did, and join their fellow "adults" in sending "skinny repeal" down the conveyor belt with a hearty shove.
Heller's example is especially pathetic, as we watched him zig (first, opposing the Senate's original Better Reconciliation Act as "bad for Nevada," then agreeing to allow to debate on it), and finally, zag (with a few more scripted verbal reservations)...before his knees buckled, and he, too, joined the "adults" on their skinny repeal stampede.
Heller's attempt to play every possible end against the middle smacks of General Friedrich Fromm's actions, as portrayed in Valkyrie. For those who don't know their war history, Fromm is the guy who declined to take part in the July 20, 1944 bomb plot against Adolf Hitler, but held out the possibility of joining the conspirators later...but only after getting proof of the dictator's demise.
Confronted with the opposite outcome, Fromm hurriedly moved to execute the ringleaders, an act that didn't fool his Nazi paymasters. He, too, wound up executed in March 1945 (having been stripped of his military status the previous -- though, out of deference to it, Hitler allowed him to be shot, rather than being slowly strangled from a loop of piano wire -- lucky guy, eh?).
Senator Heller hasn't seen the movie, I guess.
If nothing else, the near-success of all this frenetic backroom maneuvering is testimony to the siren song of groupthink -- although, funnily enough, it didn't sway Senators Susan Collins (ME), or Lisa Murkowski (AK), who staked out their opposition from the beginning, and -- unlike their tin-eared, tone-deaf colleagues -- showed signs of actually doing their homework, and listening to their residentes' concerns.
Time will tell whether the political will exists to fix the Affordable Care Act's well-documented warts (which Collins and Murkowski repeatedly pointed out, to anyone who cared to listen).. However, the failure of Trumpcare also proves that the resistance to it -- and whatever equally ill-thought-out initiatives fly off the president's desk -- is alive and well. Without so many millions of us taking the time -- whether it involved marching, picketing, or trying to track down a fugitive Senator or Congressman, ducking their constituents -- we might already have been bemoaning our return to the Dark Ages (as in, 20 to 50 million newly uninsured Americans, depending on which estimate you believed).
I will remember both those nights -- my procedure, and the collapse of Trumpcare -- as long as I live and breathe. I couldn't help but feel emotional after the impact of McCain's gesture sunk in. I'd been working late, as usual, which meant I kept the TV on. Due to the camera angles CNN was using, however, what happened wasn't immediately clear. Of course, the meaning quickly became clear enough, especially after the networks replayed that footage --- which prompted me to tell people: "This is why we do this. This is why we fight so hard to change things."
Of course, plenty of other fights loom ahead. But, for me, the biggest takeaways come down to two points: first, the system worked, for a change. A bad idea remained a bad idea, and stayed on the cutting room floor. The second is an expression attributed to Abraham Lincoln, one that Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi liked to quote when the GOP cranked up the first of its zombie healthcare bills last spring: "Public sentiment is everything." If you want to explain why Trumpcare tanked, I couldn't think of a better epitaph.. --The Reckoner
