Conservative pressure groups and policy analysts, who’ve called for a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, have judged the American Health Care Act — and found it badly wanting. Since the House GOP’s replacement plan was revealed Monday night, they’ve issued blistering statements, ticking off the ways they believe the party failed them.Commentary's Noah Rothman argues that the bill is terrible because, in this authoritarian culture, conservatives are silenced:
“The House Republican proposal released last night not only accepts the flawed progressive premises of Obamacare but expands upon them,” said Michael Needham, the president of Heritage Action for America...
FreedomWorks, the tea party group that’s planning a March 15 “day of action” on the ACA, condemned the bill as “Obamacare-lite” ...
“Obamacare-lite” is the pejorative way that [Senator Rand] Paul has described the GOP’s bill, language he used even before the text was made public. At the Conservative Review, a site edited by the influential radio host and author Mark Levin, the bill has been dubbed “RINOcare,” incorporating an acronym for Republican in name only.
The right cannot say aloud what it believes: That is, gov't cannot and should not universalize health coverage. https://t.co/e89M0zsHC6
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) March 7, 2017
No, really. Allow him to elaborate:
At some point in ObamaCare’s lifetime, ... liberalism’s censorious culture monitors succeeded in rendering it a sin to speak conservatism’s assumptions out loud. Among them is the belief that the federal government cannot expand access to health insurance in both in terms of quality and cost-effectiveness. Even if it could, that isn’t the federal government’s job....So as a result of liberal fascism -- you know, our jackbooted "censorious culture monitors" and (presumably liberal) "show hosts" -- first the president and then congressional Republicans were compelled to say that 2 + 2 = 5, they love Big Brother, and universal coverage is a good thing. That session in Room 101 with Donald Trump and Rand Paul must have been just brutal. All of this is reinforced by "social media users" who violate the human rights of conservatives by fretting about the costs of medications that keep them alive and other thuggish acts. Where are Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch when you really need them?
It’s not entirely clear when Republicans allowed Democrats to change the terms of the debate, but an unspoken concession in the Republican health care reform bill demonstrates that they clearly have. The conceit of the GOP’s bill is that the universalization of access to health insurance is now the metric by which any health care bill will be judged. That is a tragedy....
If conservative Republicans cannot even say what they believe anymore for fear of contradicting the president, or being scolded by a shallow cast of show hosts, or having to endure the opprobrium of an army of anonymous social media users, then the GOP has lost more than the argument. It’s lost its philosophical grounding.
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