Explain the law is a weekly series that examines what the right is currently obsessed with, how it’s influencing politics, and why you need to know it.
In response to Democrats pointing out Republican opposition Faced with the Affordable Care Act subsidies that millions of Americans rely on, Republicans have once again been forced to rethink their approach to health care.
The current crisis
The Republican senator. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin argued that the loss of essential health care subsidies is not a serious problem, even if families have lived sticker shock as their premiums rise.
“I don’t think it will be a heartbreaking problem if these increased subsidies disappear. We will probably have to put up with the lies that Democrats tell. Democrats say all kinds of things that are false.” he told CNBC.
Meanwhile, failed presidential candidate and current Florida governor Ron DeSantis interviewed if people even need full coverage.
“Most people, especially those under 50, really need an affordable catastrophic plan that allows them to pay for everything they do from a health savings account,” he argued.
DeSantis is a Navy veteran and has access to comprehensive coverage for him and his family.
In Congress, subsidies have become a central issue in the current government shutdown. Republicans refused to pass legislation that would fund this vital program, forcing a shutdown that reverberated through the economy.
The right has always hated health care
Opposition to health care legislation runs deep within the Republican Party, which has opposed efforts to help families for decades.
In the early 1960s, as he transitioned from actor to politician, Ronald Reagan makes a recording which was broadcast across the country to warn of the dangers of “socialized medicine.”
Before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed popular programs like Medicaid and Medicare into law as part of his “Great Society” policies, Reagan and company claimed that health care would be used to open the door to communism.
Of course, that never happened.
A little more than 30 years later, the Clinton administration pushed for health care reform. The law spoke out against the planled by first lady Hillary Clinton, who ultimately killed reform for over a decade.
Still fighting in the 21st century
It took the crisis of the Great Recession and President Barack Obama’s landslide victory to make health care reform a possibility in 2009. The right launched what was arguably its biggest smear campaign to portray the plan — modeled on Republican ideas implemented in Massachusetts — as a socialist takeover of the health care system.
The right-wing argument that the legislation would create “death panels” of bureaucrats cutting health care was nicknamed “lie of the year” by PolitiFact that year. Ultimately, the campaign failed and Obama signed the Affordable Care Act – which the right dubbed “Obamacare” in 2010.
After that, the right did not challenge the legislation all the way to the Supreme Court, spend a large part of the following years vote again and again in Congress to repeal the bill.
In the heat of the fight over the ACA, conservative voters showed where they stand. During a 2011 Tea Party debate with presidential candidates, members of the public acclaimed on the idea that instead of providing government-funded health care to a sick patient, it would be better to simply “let them die.”
But when the right wasn’t fighting insurance reform and comprehensive coverage, they were attacking health care on other fronts.
For example, the late Senator John McCain from Arizona criticized the Democrats for supporting abortion care when the “mother’s life” is in danger, using air quotes to sarcastically repeat the phrase during a debate against Obama in 2008.
More recently, the Trump administration has continued numerous cuts and changes in health care for veterans. And before health care cuts were passed in the GOP’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst argued in May that it didn’t matter if people lost their health care because “we’re all going to die.”
Conservatives have no health care plan
Right-wing figures like Trump have spent nearly a decade promising a political solution to health care problems. Asset promised for the first time a health care plan that would provide “insurance for everyone” in January 2017. This has still not been achieved.
What the right refuses to acknowledge is that the public – including many Republicans – supports government-backed health care. Programs like Medicare, Medicaid and now Obamacare have strong support.
It turns out that people would prefer to see doctors and have access to medications. instead of counting on the “free” market and the profit whims of the insurance industry.
Conservatives have dedicated themselves to destroying and undermining government support for health care, failing to offer a real alternative.
The right supports a world in which health care is so non-existent that the alternative is illness, suffering and death – and the sooner the better.
