Given the sick joke of a health plan, you might ask what happened to all those proclamations<br />that Obamacare was a terrible, no good system that Republicans would immediately replace with something far better — not to mention Donald Trump’s promises of “insurance for everybody” and “great health care.”<br />But the answer, of course, is that they were all lying, all along — and they still are.<br />And the tax on those who don’t sign up becomes a small surcharge — paid to insurance companies,<br />not the public — on people who sign up after previously letting coverage lapse.<br />Insurers are still barred from excluding the sick, but they’re allowed to charge older Americans — who need insurance the most — much higher premiums.<br />Given the rhetoric Republicans have used over the past seven years to attack health reform, you might have expected them to do away<br />with the whole structure of the Affordable Care Act — deregulate, de-subsidize and let the magic of the free market do its thing.<br />A Bill So Bad It’s Awesome -<br />It has long been obvious to anyone following health policy that Republicans would never devise a workable replacement for Obamacare.
