It's Not About Healthcare, It's About Campaign Contributions

Once again the Republican Party is leading the charge to take away access to health care from 30 million or so Americans. The leadership is attempting to rush the bill through with minimum scrutiny in order to meet a September 30 deadline for acting with only Republican votes.

When eight months and countless hours of hearings in multiple committees in both the House and Senate had been held prior to the vote on the Affordable Care Act Republicans screamed that the bill was being voted on before anyone knew what was contained in it. Now that Republicans control congress their efforts to take away health care from tens of millions of Americans, 11 million of whom are so poor they qualify for Medicaid, there will be only one hearing and it will be in the Homeland Security Committee which has never held a hearing on healthcare or much of anything else that isn’t about security from terrorism. There will be no witnesses testifying other than the senators who developed the legislation, so no one will hear from health policy experts or the people who will be affected. Make no mistake about it, this is a backroom deal and the goal is to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires who don’t need or deserve those breaks.

Unlike Texas, about half the states accepted federal funds and expanded Medicaid. Some of those states are represented by Republican Senators that have already stated that they will vote to take away that funding. Just eliminating Medicaid expansion means 11 million Americans will lose their healthcare. Sure they can still go to an emergency room when they’re really sick or injured but that treatment only covers stopping them from dying right then it doesn’t cover prescription anti-biotics or blood pressure medicine and it doesn’t cover follow up care to insure that a wound hasn’t become infected.

Even Republican governors like John Kasich of Ohio and Bill Walker of Alaska oppose the repeal because they know that doing so will hurt their constituents. Walker is seen as key to getting the bill passed this time as he’s believed to have influence over Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the three Republicans to vote no last time.

You’d think that at least some Republican Senators might shy away from voting for something that will hurt their constituents so severely but what you don’t know is that a network of wealthy donors has made repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the tax breaks that depend on it a condition of them providing $300 million to $400 million for the 2018 election cycle. In other words no tax breaks, no campaign donations. If Congress fails to repeal the network, led by the Koch brothers, will likely spend much of those funds on primary challengers and make an example of those Republicans who stood in the way.

That’s the problem with our campaign finance system; it’s obvious that these wealthy donors expect to get what they want for their money and just as obvious that our elected leaders are willing to give it to them but it isn’t illegal, even though it is antithetical to a healthy democracy.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette September 22, 2017