9/22/2020

The One Question for Republicans: What's Your Plan for When the ACA Is Gone?

I may just be a filthy writer with a fondness for sodomy references and scatological humor and not some fancy, overpaid media consultant, but if I were making ads for the Biden campaign or for any of the Democrats in Senate races, they'd be total tearjerkers dealing with how shit-covered Republicans want to fuck us in the ass over health insurance.

I'll give you bones for three spots. You want more? Fuckin' hire me.

1. Find someone who is 27 years-old who successfully beat cancer in their 20s. Get them to talk about how the only way they did that is because the Affordable Care Act kept them on their parent's health insurance until age 26. They can talk about how they would probably be dead if Trump and the GOP had their way, but, instead, they are happy, healthy, and have a job/family. They can also talk about how their cancer is a pre-existing condition now. And, of course, vote for Biden or the Democrat running for Senate.

2. Find a couple in a red state that expanded its Medicaid program under the ACA. Maybe in Montana or, for extra oomph, Kentucky. Get them to talk about all the medical conditions they got taken care of. Again, talk about how they might have been dead if Republicans had repealed the ACA. Instead, they're working and/or enjoying their kids/grandkids. Let them talk about how, if the Supreme Court gets rid of the ACA, shit will fall apart for them.

3. Find a family with a kid or two who had COVID-19, now suffering with the long-term impact, which we're only learning about, really. Have them talk about the struggle, how their insurance thankfully covers it, but how, if the ACA is overturned, the lung and other issues COVID leaves behind will now be pre-existing conditions that will affect those kids when they try to get insurance for the rest of their lives.

Tag line for all of them? "What's your plan for me, (insert Republican shitheel here)?"

Few things fucking freak people out more than the idea that they're gonna lose their health insurance. Republicans need to be made to own the fact that if the Supreme Court overturns the entire Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional, millions of Americans will lose their health insurance in an instant. Everyone on the Medicaid expansion, all 12-14 million, will no longer be on it. The millions of 20somethings covered by their parents up to 26? On their own. Everyone with an Obamacare policy? Nope, that's shitcanned. You got a pre-existing condition? Fuck you. You need expensive treatments for years? Fuck you, too. Caps are back, motherfuckers. 

That shit is all on Republicans. And Democrats, who finally embraced the ACA during the 2018 midterms after years of seeming to apologize for helping people stay alive and healthy, have gotta shove that down Republicans' throats until they choke. 

And one way to do that is to ask, again and again, "What's your fuckin' plan? You keep saying you're gonna protect people with pre-existing conditions. What's the fuckin' plan?" Same thing for any time Trump flaps his sphincter lips and says that he's going to provide better insurance at a lower cost or whatever he's lying about now. You got a plan, dick? Show it. No, not in two weeks. Not in a month. Not if you're reelected. Right fucking now. Because if you can't show the fuckin' plan right fuckin' now, you don't have a fuckin' plan.

Even if they toss out there the totally bullshit high-risk pools or low-cost, low-coverage plans, it will fall far short of covering everyone the ACA covers. Essentially, Trump will be handing people with pre-existing conditions over to the insurance companies so they can have their way with them, which, really, seems par for the course for President Friend of Epstein. The real truth is they have no plan because they don't fucking care. They don't want to show that government can do good for Americans, especially for poor and middle-class Americans.

This is a winning issue for Democrats. They need to fuckin' brutalize Republicans with it and force them to weakly mew about "freedom" as they stand atop a pile of coronavirus corpses so high we can actually see it all around the country, no matter how much Trump tries to block the bodies from view.

(Lemme add one quick, vaguely optimistic thought here, though. I am leaning towards the idea that the Supreme Court, even with whatever fucked-up tool they put in to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, won't overturn the ACA. See, the last time a SCOTUS decision was made on it, the law wasn't fully implemented. Yes, it got rid of the Medicaid expansion mandate, but the rest was left in place. Even with the case being about the individual mandate penalty being zeroed out, I just don't see Roberts or, no, really, Kavanaugh voting to take health care away from tens of millions of people. I am definitely not the only one to say this. But I think it's a distinct possibility that we'd be looking at a 5-4 or even 6-3 to preserve the ACA. 

Now, Roe v. Wade is fucked, as are a whole bunch of other civil rights protections. But on this one, I hold out the barest of hopes.)

(Note 2: Yes, you are very smart and right that the ACA is inferior to Medicare for All. But Obamacare's what we've got, so Obamacare is where the fight is right now.)