Who Needs Healthcare?

It's genuinely hard to understand.  How can people be against healthcare?  The Affordable Care Act today covers some 20 million Americans that would otherwise go uninsured yet the ACA has been under attack since the day it was first proposed by President Obama.  For that matter, the idea was under attack from the first day Bill Clinton proposed universal coverage nearly 15 years earlier.  It seems like pretty indefensible position to be against healthcare yet it remains popular with some Americans.  Obamacare, as the ACA is colloquially called, isn't perfect but the plan congressional Republicans hatched this week to prioritize its repeal without any replacement plan threatens to remove access to healthcare for those same 20 million people.

No one, not even the repeal contingent, is arguing Obamacare costs lives.  Well, at least no high profile crazy has since Michele Bachmann's sideshow on the House floor back in 2013.  However, there is wide speculation around how many lives it has saved.  The question seems to come down to what is a life worth?  The same people arguing to repeal Obamacare sure have no problem answering that question when the life at issue is a fertilized egg.  It's sacrosanct. Why then the rush to put 20 million living, breathing people at risk?  Let's catalog a few reasons the GOP may be considering:

• Rich white people in general typical receive employer provided healthcare.
• Members of congress specifically enjoy the privilege of healthcare for life just for serving.
• More than half the 20 million are women and children, the latter of which can't vote and the former of which are, well, women.
• The "it's a free country argument" typically put forth by those that think wearing a motorcycle helmet impedes on their right to a traumatic brain injury or fear the government infringing on their toddler's right to shoot them in a Walmart.

This debate is about all our family's lives.  Affordable healthcare goes beyond those without the accesse the ACA provides.  It's about corporate plans not being able to exclude preexisting conditions.  It's about children being able to remain on their parents coverage long enough to become the next generation of doctors.  Republicans have said that they want to preserve those sections of the ACA but have presented nothing concrete to indicate they are actually serious about it.  If Republicans have a better plan, great, let's hear it enact it, and support it.  They do not have one, they may never have one, and until they do the ACA must remain in place.

There is no question that the ACA could be better.  Part of the reason it isn't perfect is due to the lack of bipartisan support for the issue at all.  Partisanship on this issue must end.  Healthcare for everyone is good.  Putting people at risk so the political argument can continue is not good.  Only an idiot would disagree when put in those simple terms.  The problem is that while the concept is simple, healthcare is complex, expensive and hard.  Understanding complexity and reality beyond the familiar is something that many americans have demonstrated great ineptitude at doing.  That's ok, it's congress we are paying to understand that complexity and solve the problem.  We are paying them significantly, including covering their healthcare for life.  Assuming you're not in the idiot ranks and believe healthcare is good, do not let the ACA be repealed without a valid replacement.  Are you willing to put a dollar sign in front of your own life or that of your family?  Repeal without replacement is a decision that will do exactly that.