Add this to the list of stunning long-term strategic successes for the Republican think tanks. As Jon Stewart noted on a recent podcast, the ACA embraced the sort of privatization normalized by W as the sort of acceptable moderate position that had a modest record of success when implemented by Romney in MA. Obama & his team picked the idea up and ran with it, of necessity, discarding the "public option" along the way. Of necessity of course, that's how things got done back then. And they did it right -- as well as it could have been done given the circumstances.
And it helped a lot of people get coverage, even if that coverage was suboptimal.
And a lot of working people relied on that backstop while working jobs with little-or-no benefits.
And every year, premiums went up some and coverage schedules swizzled around a bit, but it still worked okay, and was certainly better than nothing.
And every year, elected Democrats sunk their budgetary teeth into sustaining as much benefit level as possible, including budgeted subsidies to insurance companies, falling further and further away from any notion of a single-payer system of any kind.
Now, as Democrats fight to defend funding for private insurance providers, the rule-by-decree felon is rolling out his "TrumpRX" system, which will no doubt be full of fraud and grift but still provide a service where people can fill prescriptions at near-wholesale prices without going through insurance. How much this actually helps people remains to be seen, but when the government can't stay open and ACA plan costs are skyrocketing and your kid needs some crazy expensive prescription to keep breathing, F47's website is going to start looking pretty good.
Think about this for a minute. The party of FDR that has for decades fought (and still fights) tooth-and-nail for Social Security and Medicare is now relegated to bargaining for money to give to insurance companies. F47 is establishing a system to bypass insurance completely. Tyrannically, of course, that's in his nature, but the genius of putting a proto-fascist like F47 on top of this pile lies in his natural tendency to do the fascist thing anyway and make it seem normal to a broad swath of the electorate. As ACA plans become untenable, people will turn to F47's alternative for whatever assistance it provides.
And the Democrats will be left holding the bag.
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