{COMMENTARY}
Republicans are nothing if not persistent. Still stinging from defeat of their multiple attempts to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, Senate Republicans have hatched a new strategy – repeal the mandate to buy insurance under the auspices of tax “reform.”
In fact, the maneuver promises a “two-fer” payoff – Starve Obamacare of enrollees (contrary to Trumpist predictions, enrollment numbers are way up, not down) and free up billions of dollars in federal subsidies to help finance mega-tax giveaways to corporations and the 1%. Woo-hoo! That’s what the right calls a genuine “win-win.”
There are at least two fat flies in this ointment, however. First, you can’t repeal the individual mandate without roiling the insurance markets, which will eventually – and probably sooner rather than later – jack up everyone’s premiums, as the young and healthy pass on purchasing policies, leaving behind a higher concentration of less healthy consumers to cover. Second, how long will it take before the broad public figures out that the “biggest middle-class tax cut in history” is a ginormous lie, benefiting big corporations and the super-rich at their expense? I’m guessing not too long.
Comeuppance at the ballot box won’t follow long behind, perhaps as early as 2018, for sure by 2020.
The Southern Miss School of Social Work 