Arizona Sen. John McCain is two times a hero – a hero for the living hell he endured in North Vietnam and a hero for his thumbs-down last week on his fellow Republicans’ latest pathetic effort to repeal ObamaCare.
And, not to forget, there were two other heroes who deserve our undying thanks and praise – Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. Both women voted against the cruel proposal, despite all kind of threats made against them. They showed political courage and a passionate commitment to the hundreds of thousands of people in their states who would have lost insurance coverage if that vicious bill – or another version of it – had passed in both Houses of Congress.
Even powerful Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham didn’t mince words in rapping the so-called “skinny” proposal to whittle away at ObamaCare. The effort, Graham said, is a “fraud.”
Without all three of those strong Republican senators, the proposal would have succeeded, sending insurance companies into panic mode and plunging millions of Americans – sick or about to be sick – into agonies of uncertainty.
The floor vote at 2 a.m. that morning in the U.S. Senate was truly historic, a cause for celebration. That is because after seven years of manic threats to repeal-and-replace the Affordable Care Act, it was starkly evident Republicans did not have a humane or workable replacement at all and never did, nor did the Trump folks in the White House.
Their cobbled-together proposal was so awful, so inhumane that many Republicans were actually relieved it did not pass, fearing electoral retribution from the folks back home. But, even so, they knew they’d better vote for it so they could at least go back to their states and tell the ObamaCare-haters they at least tried to repeal the ACA.
Now it’s time to get serious and quit playing repeal-replace games, a form of cynical congressional peek-a-boo. There are enough intelligent, serious senators and representatives on both sides of the aisle to get together in committees and work hard to patch the holes of the leaking Affordable Care Act (namely, strengthening re-insurance payments, shoring up the exchanges) until a better, more comprehensive solution can be found. Who cares what the resulting bill is called? As long as it does the job – that is, makes widespread – if not universal – access to health care affordable.
The goal, of course, should still be “universal” health care, such as all other civilized countries have long enjoyed. The powers that be will fight tooth and claw against a “foreign” solution they’ll attack as “socialism, communism.”
However, a loud chorus is growing in this nation for a “Medicare For All” solution, a form of a one-payer system by another name. Ask anybody over 65; Medicare works. Like all systems, it needs periodic tweaking, but it works. And wouldn’t it be grand if we would extend it for every American citizen?
