A glimmer of hope in health care debate

At one turn he’s the Consoler in Chief who promises health care for us all. At another, a seething avenger in a red tie who wants Obamacare dead and gone by any means necessary. And at any cost — with nothing to replace it. At least nothing good and decent.

So it was last week, when the president triumphantly ended federal subsidies to the Affordable Care Act, thereby putting at risk health coverage for millions of Americans, not to mention more than 300,000 North Carolinians. That’s why North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, rightly joined 18 other attorneys general in a lawsuit to prevent the president from, as Stein put it, an “unlawful and reckless decision to stop payments to help hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians afford health insurance.”

The president has done this kind of thing before, weakening the ACA through neglect or outright sabotage, and then declaring it terminally ill. It’s “imploding,” he says of Obamacare, as he tosses one stick of dynamite its way. And then another.

The cuts to subsidies would force many to replace affordable, quality coverage under Obamacare policies for bare-bones health coverage. Or none at all.

Yet, amid all the repeated, destructive attempts to repeal rather than repair the ACA — out of spite more than anything else — comes a glimmer of hope. A bipartisan agreement would save the ACA subsidies. Or at least extend them. The Senate bill would resume the subsidies, which are paid to insurers to keep premiums low for low-income ACA enrollees, for two years. Brokered by Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the deal would allow low-income people to keep their coverage and prevent insurers from leaving some markets. It also would give states more flexibility in the choices they offer consumers. And it would restore millions of dollars in funding for outreach and advertising.

This approach certainly is more rational and compassionate than the Trump administration’s threats to let the ACA die on the vine. And, in fact, to help it die by reducing advertising for the ACA and curtailing the enrollment period.

In a pleasant surprise, Trump praised the bipartisan plan. At least for a while. “For one, two years, we’re going to have a very good solution,” the president said on Tuesday.

But by Wednesday he was panning it in a tweet. “I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process,” Trump posted, “but I can never support bailing out ins co’s who have made a fortune w/ O’Care.”

Other Republicans also have been lukewarm to the agreement, if not outright hostile. Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina called the agreement “a good start,” even as he stood firm on the ACA’s repeal.

But Rep. Mark Walker of Greensboro dismissed the pact as “unacceptable.” “Obamacare is in a death spiral,” Walker told The New York Times. “Anything propping it up is only saving what Republicans promised to dismantle.”

That’s unfortunate, not to mention hard-hearted.

And it means this rare outbreak of statesmanship and adult thinking in Congress faces a treacherous path, riddled with the potholes of Trump’s maddening inconsistency. Who knows where he’ll stand on it tomorrow? Or, for that matter, in the next half-hour?

The last thing this discussion needed was more chaos. But with Trump that’s almost a given.

So, for now, a gnawing uncertainty persists. While there is a still a sliver of common sense and common decency in Washington, it’s hanging by the flimsy thread of this president’s credibility.

http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/n_and_r_editorials/our-opinion-a-glimmer-of-hope-in-health-care-debate/article_77fd7718-88d5-59bf-97c5-d31b28c35c92.html