Ersatz ObamaCare Replacement

Despite its shortcomings and compromises, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, sometimes called ‘ObamaCare’) helps provide affordable health insurance coverage to twenty million of our most vulnerable fellow citizens – the working poor, who make enough money to lift them above the official poverty line, but whose employers don’t provide health insurance, and who can’t afford to pay the full price on their own.  It also defined Minimum Essential Coverage, to make sure that any qualifying policies would meet basic needs.    

In every other advanced industrial nation, the only thing even slightly controversial about the ACA is that it is not more comprehensive.  It is axiomatic that access to affordable healthcare is a fundamental human right.  The idea that somebody who is barely getting by, with little job security and hardly any savings—could face huge medical bills and financial ruin as the result of an illness or injury is recognized everywhere else as a human rights violation.  Here it is so common, it isn’t even news.  

The supposed 'replacement' which is scheduled for a vote today would do worse than reverse these gains; dumping 24 million of our working poor into the jungle of the individual health insurance market, where they have no prayer of obtaining decent affordable health insurance.  

Ironically, the best hope we have of avoiding the passage of this disastrous bill today are votes against it from congressional representatives who insist on a system which would be even more cruel.  

EPA and Naugas

In the first major environmental success for the new administration, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announce the removal of the nauga from the Endangered Species list.  

According to the press release:  
“These gentle creatures once roamed the plains in such numbers that the ground was barely visible beneath them; the air a cacophony of hundreds of thousands of their, ‘nauga nauga nauga’ vocalizations.  The naugas were hunted nearly to extinction in the 1960s and 70s for their hides – for use in cheap automobile upholstery.  But thanks to changes in consumer preferences, a successful captive breeding program, and the nauga’s prodigious rate of reproduction, their continued success as a species is all but assured.”    

An EPA spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity hinted at more good news on the horizon, related to the Corinthian buffalo, also once hunted for its fine leather.