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A Grotesque Failure Of Leadership: Republicans Celebrate — But We’ll All Pay For The Way They Jammed The Trumpcare Atrocity Through The House

Republicans didn’t want to know what was in this god-awful bill — and can only hope the rest of us don’t either.

Trump’s rose gar­den press conference.

After they had vot­ed Wednesday to screw tens of mil­lions of Americans out of the health care and finan­cial pro­tec­tions grant­ed them by the pas­sage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, House Republicans marched over to the White House for a Rose Garden press con­fer­ence. There they ver­bal­ly fel­lat­ed one anoth­er for the brav­ery they had just shown. “Leadership” was the watch­word of the day.

“Thanks to the lead­er­ship of President Donald Trump; wel­come to the begin­ning of the end of Obamacare,” Vice President Mike Pence intoned. “Thank you, Mr. President, for your lead­er­ship,” said the gid­dy-look­ing House Speaker Paul Ryan. “Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, I am proud … again to say thank you for your lead­er­ship,” drawled the gnomish chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Rep. Kevin Brady. Trump, while not using the word, nonethe­less praised Ryan for the efforts he had under­tak­en to drag out enough votes from his caucus.

It was a sur­re­al cel­e­bra­tion, con­sid­er­ing how far this bill still has to go before it gets to the president’s desk to be con­sid­ered for sign­ing. It was even more sur­re­al for the bla­tant lies com­ing out of the mouths of var­i­ous Republicans about what this bill will do, at least if the final ver­sion remote­ly resem­bles this one. No one in the Rose Garden on Thursday after­noon want­ed to admit it, but the finan­cial and human costs are sim­ply staggering.

As many as 24 mil­lion few­er peo­ple with health insur­ance. An $880 bil­lion cut to Medicaid, which pro­vides health care cov­er­age to rough­ly one 1 of every 5 Americans (and would cov­er more if not for the 19 states that have turned down Obamacare’s Medicaid expan­sion). The defund­ing of Planned Parenthood. Cuts to treat­ment for addic­tion, for nurs­ing home costs, for spe­cial edu­ca­tion stu­dents. The return of insur­ance com­pa­nies deny­ing cov­er­age for pre-exist­ing con­di­tions. The list of those pre-exist­ing con­di­tions. And on and on and on.
Read more here: http://www.salon.com/2017/05/05/a‑grotesque-failure-of-leadership-republicans-celebrate-but-well-all-pay-for-the-way-they-jammed-the-trumpcare-atrocity-through-the-house/