Every time Republicans go on television to talk about health care, the lies flow, the facts disappear and not one of the million-dollar mouthpieces seem armed with a clue to correct the record.
This episode of “Devlin vs The News,” Tara discusses Trump lying his way through 60 Minutes and Marjorie Taylor Greene sitting on Bill Maher’s panel blaming Obamacare for everything wrong with the country’s for-profit health insurance racket.
The truth, of course, is Obamacare did not make health insurance unaffordable—Republican sabotage did
For all Trump’s lying that “Obamacare is lousy healthcare”, the fact remains Obamacare is not a health care delivery system. It is a set of regulations on the insurance industry, meant to stop the most egregious abuses in a system designed to enrich a few greedy ghouls at the expense of everyone else. The ACA forced insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions, banned lifetime caps, made them actually cover basic care, and stopped them from kicking you off your plan the minute you got sick. That’s it. That’s “Obamacare”—a floor of regulation Republicans have been working to destroy since the moment it passed.
So when Trump lies about being “one vote away” from “great health care,” he’s talking about stripping those regulations and returning to the days when getting sick meant getting kicked off what little insurance you have, possibly losing your home, your savings, declaring a uniquely American medical bankruptcy, and of course… maybe needlessly losing your life if you can’t afford care.
The only Republican “plan” is just more destruction of the safety net.
Meanwhile, on Bill Maher’s show, Marjorie Taylor Greene seemed almost reasonable for a moment, admitting her frustration that Republicans have “no plan.” But her supposed awakening only happened after her adult daughters complained to her about rising insurance premiums—premiums that skyrocketed as a direct result of the same Republican Big Ugly Bill she voted for. Instead of holding herself and her fellow saboteurs accountable, Greene blamed Obamacare for the price hikes.
In reality, it was the Republican Party—led by Marco Rubio—who deliberately destroyed the “risk corridors,” a key part of the ACA designed to keep premiums affordable. Rubio’s sabotage gutted a major part of the program’s stabilizing mechanisms, causing the insurance racketeers to hike prices for everyday Americans. Year after year, the Republican health “plan” was stripping, gutting, and dismantling any measure that might actually make healthcare affordable.
It’s textbook Republican strategy — create chaos, destroy what works, then stand on the ashes and rail about how broken it is.
The unconscionable facts remain. Americans spend more on health care than any country on earth—17.6% of GDP, double the average for wealthy democracies. What do we get? The worst health outcomes, millions uninsured, thousands forced into bankruptcy, and GoFundMe campaigns for basic care. All because there is no “market solution” for healthcare. The GOP plan has always been, “don’t get sick, but if you do, die quickly.”
The only way to free us from the Republican chaos is with finally providing Americans with a public option—real universal health care where we get care as a right, not as a perk of of job or privilege of wealth. We don’t need to argue about “fixing” Obamacare when the only thing that’s broken is and always has been the for-profit insurance racket and the politicians doing their bidding.
Republican lies thrive because the media rarely pushes back.
No one should get to sit on national TV and peddle convenient fairy tales about health care—least of all the Republicans who destroyed what little relief the ACA secured. Until we face up to the real villain, Americans will keep suffering, and the racket will roll on. Universal care, delivered as a right—nothing less. That’s the fight. That’s the fix. And that’s what the rest of the civilized world already knows.
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