The primary reason the most recent effort by Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare should go down in defeat is because it fails to live up to the standard of justice for all.
Republicans don’t seem to have much concern for that, though, and I think I know why.
Doing justice is very hard work.
The original purpose of Obamacare was to expand Medicaid in order to provide healthcare for people who didn’t have it.
It did many other good things (eliminating pre-existing conditions, no lifetime caps, preventive coverage, guaranteed coverage), but its first purpose was to give people insurance who otherwise could not afford to have it.
In short, it was intended to make healthcare in this country more just, but the current Republican Senate and House or Donald Trump have shown no concern for justice.
Trump even said he would provide healthcare for all and at a cheaper price. He lied.
He and the Republican Congress have only one goal – defeating Obamacare, justice be damned.
To that end they have mounted a propaganda campaign to convince people that Obamacare is a disaster, to use Trump’s favorite description of it.
It’s not true, and never has been. Having problems that need to be fixed is not at all the same thing as being a disaster.
What Obamacare proves is that trying to do what is right, in this instance, doing justice, is very difficult.
It’s always easy to do what is NOT right, and doing nothing about a system that was allowing people to die from lack of healthcare was not right.
Republicans have had alternatives to Obamacare, only they have all been unjust, morally wrong plans.
Those kinds of plans are easy to come up with because they take no brains and certainly have no heart.
This latest version is worse than all the rest for many reasons, and Republicans know it, which is why they want to vote on it before the CBO can tell the country how truly bad it is.
The only reason any one of these unjust plans is not already law is that there are a few holdovers from the days when Republicans believed in justice for all.
They disagreed with Democrats on how to achieve that, but they were committed to that principle.
Not anymore. It’s the free market or nothing for them, and, as I have said, justice be damned.
John McCain is one of those holdovers. We’ll see if Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski really are, or can their vote be bought as Cassidy and Graham are trying to do.
It’s bad enough not to provide health insurance to people, but to take it away from those who already have it strikes me as punitive, if not outright cruel.
It’s no wonder that justice and compassion in America have always had to fight for their lives, a fact that can be quite discouraging when you think about it.
But justice and compassion and trying to do what it morally right cannot afford for those of us who believe in them to get discouraged.
They need us to keep fighting on their behalf because they are the heart and soul of what makes America good.
Frankly, I couldn’t care less about American being great again.
I don’t even care about America being great.
But I do care about American being good.
And when you believe in that, continuing to work on behalf of justice for all Americans, difficult as it is, is worth everything it asks of you.
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