After Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act during the first year of Donald Trump’s first term, the president and his White House team shifted their strategy on the issue. In fact, in 2019, the GOP administration effectively gave up on the idea of Congress tearing down the health care reform law.
Instead, Trump and his team urged the courts to take down the system and strip tens of millions of American families of their benefits.
That plan ultimately didn’t work out for Republicans, either — the ACA has repeatedly withstood scrutiny from the U.S. Supreme Court — but as the Trump White House leaned into that strategy in early 2019, a reporter asked the president what his message was to families concerned about what he might do to their health security.
“Let me tell you exactly what my message is: The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care,” he responded. “You watch.”
Well, we watched. Six years later, I think it’s fair to say the GOP is still not known as “the party of health care.”
The rhetorical push, however, apparently remains ongoing. Politico reported:
During a news conference Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back on Democratic rhetoric, arguing the [GOP megabill approved in July] would help ‘fix’ health care. Republican leaders have touted the bill’s ability to target fraud, waste and abuse in federal health programs. ‘Let me look right into the camera and tell you clearly: Republicans are the ones concerned about health care,’ Johnson said.
Despite the fact that Johnson gave his members another week off and they don’t appear to be doing any work on any issue, the House speaker quickly added that his party is “working around the clock every day to fix health care.”
Hours later, the Louisiana congressman told Newsmax that Trump “wants to be the health care president.”
The debate (such as it is) need not be complicated: Republicans opposed every major congressional effort at health care reform for several decades, up to and including the fight over the Affordable Care Act, which received a grand total of zero GOP votes.
In the years that followed, Republicans made every possible effort to undermine and repeal the law, despite its successes. All the while, party leaders, including Trump, offered public assurances about their ability to deliver a superior model to the ACA, and after more than a decade of false promises, the GOP — “the ones concerned about health care” — still doesn’t have a plan that exists in reality.
More recently, Republicans opposed the Democratic effort to increase ACA subsidies, making coverage even more affordable for millions of Americans, and they continue to resist efforts to maintain the status quo — which brings us to the ongoing government shutdown.
All the while, the Republican administration is gutting the nation’s public health infrastructure in unprecedented ways, undermining potentially lifesaving medical research and, in recent months, even celebrating a far-right megabill that’s poised to do more damage to the nation’s health care system than any modern piece of American legislation.
And yet, there was the House speaker, looking into a camera and declaring, “Republicans are the ones concerned about health care.”
How he managed to deliver the line with a straight face remains unclear.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
