SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Following a day of drama, marathon meetings, intense discussions and combative posturing, the vote to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been postponed until Friday. House Republicans must persuade at least 21 members of their caucus to support the bill, under the presumption that no Democrats will endorse it. However, 26 conservatives confirmed that they will vote against the current version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Four other Republicans stated they would likely oppose it. Despite concessions, the bill, derisively dubbed Obamacare Lite, “doesn’t begin to discriminate or hate hard enough,” opponents explained. “We were sold Mengele; what we got stank of Mother Teresa.”

Nobody Cares for Trumpcare

As CNN reported, “President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan have been lobbying members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and also moderate Republicans in an attempt to reach the 216 votes they need to pass the bill.”

According to The New York Times, the number of defecting Republicans could ultimately sink the act, regardless of the delayed vote. The most strenuous defiance seems to be coming from the House Freedom Caucus. The Associated Press tweeted on Thursday that the group’s members had not been swayed to strike a deal during fraught negotiations with the president and Speaker Ryan:

BREAKING: House Freedom Caucus chairman says "no deal" reached on health bill after meeting with Trump, putting vote in doubt.

Politico added, “Negotiations between Trump and the arch-conservatives [sic] opponents of the bill reached at least a temporary standstill after Freedom Caucus members were told recent concessions to the far-right represented a final offer. The group rejected that, wanting more.”

Staunchly conservative legislators were in fact promised more. Repealing the ACA, which has enjoyed more success than condemnation, was never intended to remedy the law’s existing shortcomings. It was meant to strip access from problematic segments of the population -- primarily poor, infirm, immigrant and LGBTQ communities. Trumpcare fell short of achieving those goals. Hardliners criticized the scarcity of hate, discrimination and inaccessibility they were pledged. If another round of revisions fails to inflict sufficiently severe and debilitating damage on the 30 million degenerate moochers who are exploiting affordable marketplaces, the White House will never clinch the votes needed.

Trumpcare Offers Way Too Much Care

Paul Ryan has long crusaded on the campaign to eviscerate Obama’s landmark health legislation, which he feels defies the tenets of free market capitalism. But his heartlessness and Trump’s ruthless disdain for the weak seemed conspicuously absent from the new plan. As the president admitted on February 27, while meeting with the nation’s governors, health care is “an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated. I mean the current law was written by a black man. So you wouldn’t think it could be so confusing. Black guys handle simple tasks. They’re cooks and janitors and basketball players. That’s why I put Ben Carson in charge of urban housing. Any moron can work in real estate. It takes a spectacular idiot to fail.”

But the dissenting House Republicans explained that a eugenic, nearly genocidal health initiative is imperative to the progress of the nation.

“Everyone was up in arms when we slashed the budget for environmental agencies,” said Connor Uris, an aide for the Freedom Caucus. “What they don’t understand is that repealing and replacing Obamacare was an issue of protecting the environment. We all know global warming is a crock. The sun isn’t destroying the planet, overpopulation is. The AHCA was supposed to fix that.”

The Guardian supported Uris’ assessment in a 2013 article: “There are now more than 7 billion of us on Earth. As our numbers continue to grow, we continue to increase our need for far more water, far more food, far more land, far more transport and far more energy. As a result, we are accelerating the rate at which we’re changing our climate.”

Uris remarked that Trump’s health proposal would continue to provide federal assistance for the elderly, indigent and other underperforming members of society. “If even one dollar is being spent on Medicare, it’s a failure,” Uris said.

Revisions Needed to Pass Trumpcare

After a closed-door session Thursday evening, disillusioned House Republicans issued a list of provisions that would help the president secure their votes.

• People are healthier and living longer, thanks to programs like the ACA and Meals on Wheels. Because they are more mentally and physically vibrant, older Americans are refusing to die, as members of a polite society do. Slashing Meals on Wheels is a strong step toward fixing Obamacare’s Death Panel failure, but as long as senior citizens have access to Medicare, the problem persists.
• Families of veterans, despite cutbacks, still receive benefits. They did not serve in the military, they did not sacrifice for their country and they are ineligible for VA care. Language in the original draft also provided tax credits to veterans who were not enrolled in TRICARE or the Veterans Administration. Without harsher measures, these defunct and now useless individuals will become lingering burdens on taxpayers.
• The AHCA does roll back some essential services, such as psychological care. But without a firm strategy to dispose of the mentally ill, no significant reduction of related homelessness, crime or violence would occur. More insane people running loose would necessitate an augmentation of police, which represents an additional drain on government coffers.
• Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) provoked outrage when he joked about the loss of covered mammogram services. “I wouldn’t want to lose my mammograms,” he snarked to a reporter. He hastily apologized and pointed out that a sub-clause in the current AHCA law does provide women with free mammograms if they are willing to travel to D.C. where President Trump will perform the examinations personally. “Each five-minute groping would cost American taxpayers about $4 million, so this is unreasonable,” Uris explained.
• Trump apparently penciled in a rider that legalizes incest. Religious extremists in the House, although gladdened by the defunding of all abortion-related procedures, felt incest belonged in a separate bill. “Sure, the Bible endorses and even glorifies incest in certain chapters, but the potential of siring a generation of crazed, deformed children could increase reliance on federal disability programs,” Uris warned. “That would defeat the entire purpose of weeding out the frail and ending funding for health.”
• A revised law must segregate and eliminate any sponsored care for specific diseases. “Sickle-cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, hyperlipidaemia, malaria, AIDS and suicide-bomb related ailments affect only a specific group of people,” Uris noted. “They are a minority cross-section of the broader nation. Why should real Americans be paying to cover treatments they will never require?”
• Although Trumpcare dissolves an insurer’s obligation to cover patients with pre-existing conditions, it stops at mandating DNA testing to detect yet-to-be conditions. “Without compulsory genetic testing, we could still be saddled with sick people later on,” said Uris. “We need to see if people have a predisposition for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, jungle fever, homosexuality, dangerous belief systems or compromised heredity -- like someone in the family may have had sickle-cell anemia, if you know what I mean.”

Ultimately, Uris stated, all regulations and requirements must be removed, leaving consumers free to make choices without government interference. Under the Supreme Court’s ruling on Citizens United, for example, corporations are people. Health insurers are corporations and therefore people. If federal oversight prevents them from charging fees that keep them profitable and operating above margins, they wither and die. Revenues are their food. Forcing them to ration their food will lead to starvation and death.

“It’s government-sanctioned murder,” Uris declared. “Any person -- whether made of flesh or concrete -- must have the freedom of choice. Survival depends on it.” He said House Republicans would demand the rescission of all regulations to earn their support for the next iteration of the AHCA.

“Can you imagine?” he asked. “What if the government made it a legal requirement to carry commercial insurance to operate a motor vehicle? Driving is a privilege, not a right. Forcing a motorist to purchase insurance in order to exercise that privilege would be almost as unconstitutional as Obamacare. It would cripple our freedoms and transform the nation into a despotic, socialist state. Right now, President Trump’s health bill is doing nothing to prevent that outcome.”

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