Obamacare's enduring victory - By Eugene Robinson
What’s the holdup, House Republicans? During the Obama administration, you passed literally dozens of bills to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act — knowing that none had any chance of being signed into law. Now that Donald Trump is in the White House, why can’t you seem to pull the trigger?
That’s a rhetorical question, of course. Republicans see that they have two choices: They can snatch health insurance away from millions of people, or they can replace Obamacare with something that looks suspiciously like Obamacare-with-a-different-name. Wary of both alternatives, erstwhile anti-ACA zealots have spent the first month of the Trump administration doing little more than clearing their throats.
The framework laid out by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and other GOP officials last week is part capitulation, part evasion. In no way is it worthy of being called policy.
The surrender comes in the promise to keep the most popular features of Obamacare, which are a guarantee of coverage for those with preexisting medical conditions and a provision ensuring that dependents can remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26. Republicans accurately calculate that taking either of these benefits away would be politically suicidal — and that Trump, who has promised health care for “everybody,” probably would balk.
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