Opinion Today

The New York Times
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
NYTimes.com/Opinion

Obamacare is on quite a hot streak:

Public opinion on the law has turned positive.

Republican governors failed this weekend to agree on a potential replacement. Congressional leaders also can't come to an agreement.

Stephen Bannon and other White House aides are now nervous about the political costs of repeal.

The Congressional Budget Office says that the Republican ideas for replacement would leave millions of people without health insurance.

And Donald Trump complained yesterday, "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated."

Does this hot streak mean that millions of Americans might not have their health insurance taken away? Yes, it does. The fight to protect health care is starting to win. But now is no time for complacency.

My column this week tries to explain what's going on and why Republican leaders suddenly seem to have gone a little soft.

The full Opinion report from The Times follows, including Paola Benefo on having her parents deported and Tom Cole, a Republican congressman, with advice for Trump's speech tonight.

David Leonhardt
Op-Ed Columnist

CAT Tracks Editor's Note:

Obamacare?

Trumpcare?

I don't care...

...what they call it, but every citizen of the U.S. of A needs to have health care, mandated to have it if necessary.

And, yes, that means all those young and healthy people who don't think they need the coverage. Hell, especially them. They are the ones who can fund it for the less fortunate. Just like all of us who don't have car accidents, who don't have our houses burn to the ground, pay for those who do.

Every one of us is a walking health-care time bomb waiting to explode.

Even if you are blessed with good genes, you can be taking your morning walk (for health, no less) and step into a pothole and break an ankle...

...or have a limb from a dead tree in a long-abandoned property fall on you (yes, sometimes the sky is falling!) and maim you rather than kill you...

...and it's off to the hospital you go for what could be a lengthy stay and rehabilitation, which would wipe out your "nest egg", cause bankruptcy, and put your butt out on the street by the time your creditors get through with you.

So...

...the time has come to do this thing, to make universal health care coverage the law of the land.

Maybe now that the Republicans "own it", now that the Republicans can no longer simply oppose it "because Obama did it," maybe, just maybe, we will finally get what we have needed for, for, forever.

My song for the occasion:

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you might find
You get what you need

We, the People...