The American Human: Why the Ryan/Trump "Obamacare Repeal and Replace" Didn't Succeed

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Why the Ryan/Trump "Obamacare Repeal and Replace" Didn't Succeed

I've been reading a lot of autopsies of the AHCA failure. They generally miss the mark.

Dumb and Dumber.

You only need to know two things about the AHCA failure:

Donald Trump didn't really know what was in the bill. But the bullet points sounded okay.
Paul Ryan wasn't trying to reform healthcare. He was trying to pull a fast one: He was really trying to repeal Medicaid. He wrapped it in a tax cut as a sweetener.

Therefore, when their party looked at the bill, they couldn't see any there there. When the conservatives demanded and got some there there, the moderates said no way.

So why did the conservatives vote it down anyway? Trump pissed them off with threats to "go after them." They're pliant, but they're not going to let some fucking dick play them, especially some fucking dick named Donald Trump.

There it is. If Trump knew how to play well with the other kids, he might have gotten his way. Good to know.

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About the American Human

The American Human is written by Calvin Ross, a retired teacher who at various points in life has been a musician, woodworker, restaurateur, narrator, English teacher in Japan, novelist, technology journalist, and private tutor to Japanese children here in the U.S.

Happily residing in the wine country of Sonoma County north of San Francisco, Calvin has lived in the Philippines, the Netherlands, and the aforementioned Japan, as well as in Chicago, Colorado, Georgia, and many different towns in California, including, of all places, the Mojave Desert.

Calvin, you may note quickly, is a liberal progressive who doesn't think being called a socialist is all that bad, especially since he sort of would like living in Denmark if it weren't so cold. He blogs because he can.