Flutterby™! : Republicare

I had a long rant about the Republican health care proposal that was revealed yesterday (with 2 whole days of deliberation before the vote). How devoting over 10% of it to clauses about lottery winners seemed like governance by toddler tantrum. How replacing the individual mandate with a 30% premium hike in the first year looked designed to remove the cost savings of preventive care and replace it with more risk taking. How the whole thing seems to be part of the long slide from Republicans laying claim to the "economic conservative" label to Republicans simply carving out regulatory capture to legislate profits in one sector at the expense of overall economic growth, indeed of economic sanity.

I like to believe that there was a time when it wasn't like this. The Affordable Care Act was essentially what George Bush proposed back in the 1991 era time frame. What Mitt Romney implemented in Massachusetts. It wasn't perfect, but it was a set of political compromises that moved the US towards the reduced healthcare costs and improved outcomes that actual developed nations had. Yes, Democrats blocked it back then and it took the delicate maneuvering of Barack Obama to get it passed, but if we can't have a real healthcare system, it was a step in the right direction.

This current set of "burn it all down, lie about it, and run off with the profits" GOP leadership is just. I don't understand. If the intent is to destroy the federal government and bring about a French Revolution style era of guillotines, do they not understand that they're going to get caught up in this too? I don't get it.