Not an April’s Fools Joke!

How much has the debate on healthcare changed? Seriously with the defeat of the Ryan bill (which was a horrible proposal to be sure) some interesting things are being bandied about which have more of a chance to pass now that we’ve gotten the stupidity of the Freedom Caucus morons behind us.

Trump did his bit, playing like the good Republican and letting Ryan hang himself with his own stupidity (hoisted on his own petard comes to mind) which can never be imagined to be a bad thing.

I hate Paul Ryan if you hadn’t noticed, you can see my earlier comments about my thoughts on his ideas about healthcare reform here.

However, the NY POST of all places ran this article which lets you know things have changed and hopefully (for Republicans and for all Americans) the party is being moved back to the center after being hijacked by the extreme right.

The simplest way to do this is universal health care, on the Canadian model, with a right of individuals to purchase a Cadillac plan on top of this out of pocket. And there are things that might be added, like removing the ban on reimporting drugs from Canada.

Not only would this be close to what Trump promised, but it would be a responsible response to the problem — one, moreover, that would reach across the aisle to the Democrats. Take out all the killer amendments that would give them a plausible excuse to reject it, and ask them to put up or shut up.

Now let me tell you who’d support this. The people who elected Trump in 2016. They weren’t right-wing ideologues. They were people who had lost or who feared they’d lose their jobs. Many were but a few steps away from the diseases of despair, social isolation, drug and alcohol poisonings and suicide that Anne Case and her husband, Nobel laureate Sir Angus Deaton, tell us have lowered the life expectancy of white Americans.

Could it be we finally get UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE DONE and with a Republican President to boot!?!?

I started to write this ahead of April’s Fool and then never got around to finishing it breaking a good string of posting every day but what is interesting is seeing the reactions this has garnered in the interim.

On the right, Ryan has worried the President might work with the Democrats! Oh my! The sky might fall! In the process Ryan exposes himself to be an idiot who wants to stand on principle above the good of the country.

Alternately, there are people on the left too, so indulgent in their glee over the failure of Ryan’s piece of shit and happy to make it an emblem of failure they can wrap around the President’s neck, they miss the opportunity they have. They like Ryan want to embrace their principles as opposed to finding what common ground there may be between the two sides.

It says a lot about the dysfunction in government these days.