John McCain’s Grandstanding Didn’t Save the ACA
I will thank John McCain for his vote to kill the “skinny repeal,” but that’s about as far as I’ll go, because it’s clear that this is a man who’s more interested in appearances than with American’s health. With his “just watch the show” comment, he revealed what was on his mind, creating the appearance of a nail-biting showdown where he walks in as the cowboy lawman who “does the right thing.”
To his credit, his vote was mostly the right thing, though he could have voted against it two days ago and spared everyone the tension of the the vote this morning. But what’s really telling is the press release he issued about his vote.
First off, he’s still happy to work to kill the ACA, which is bad enough. There are certainly flaws in Obamacare, but Congress could easily fix them if they chose. Repeal is not at all necessary. But McCain goes on to say why, and it’s an unholy porridge of bullshit and crocodile tears.
The ACA, he complains, was “rammed through Congress … without a single Republican vote.” Unlike the current repeal, where the Senate barely knew what it was voting for, ACA had more than a year of public hearings with lawmakers and experts, and the GOP submitted over 160 amendments that were incorporated into the law. All that is on top of the fact that the ACA was based on the successful health care law in Massachusetts, commonly known as Romneycare enacted under Republican governor Mitt Romney.
McCain then goes on to bemoan the “collapse” of Obamacare because, “premiums are skyrocketing and health care providers are fleeing the marketplace.” However, if we look at those things in context, those problems are a direct result of sabotage by Donald Trump.
Now it’s true that heath care costs were rising before Trump was elected, but they were rising before the ACA was enacted, and Obamacare had successfully slowed the rate of increase. The problem now, is that the current administration is deliberately destabilizing the market. In Montana, Blue Cross/Blue Shield is more than a 20% increase in premiums because of the uncertainty the administration has created when they’re seeing cost increases of only around 2%.
Similarly, insurers are leaving the program because Trump has threatened to withhold the necessary subsidies, and not to enforce employer mandates which make the insurance pool larger and more stable.
So none of John McCain’s claims of why he voted no really hold up, though I’m glad he did it. But Trump seemed unfazed, and when he tweeted, “let Obamacare implode,” it’s not because the law is failing, it’s because he’s sabotaging it and hoping you won’t notice just who is responsible for the problems.
