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Opinion: Let me know you got it please

Andrew Whyman
Andrew Whyman
File photo |

Dear President Trump,

This is the second letter I’ve written you. You never answered the first one, but I know that you are a voracious reader, and just didn’t have time because you’ve been busy digesting all the details of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). So, I’m writing now to congratulate you on preserving Obamacare.

Your so-called failure to fulfill your promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare just shows how ignorant the lame stream media can be.



They just don’t get it. They, along with House Speaker Paul Ryan and all the other, “Get the federal government out of medical care,” conservatives in the House insisted that Americans want to choose a health plan that works for them, even if they can’t afford it.

What a brilliant strategy: You told the public that Obamacare is “complicated.” When repeal and replace failed to even come up for a vote, you courageously blamed both the Republican conservative caucus and Democrats. You even managed to convince much of the country that failing to repeal and replace was a reflection of a chaotic, undisciplined, unwise, and uninformed White House with you at the center of the storm.

You even had health care stock investor and wealthy orthopedic surgeon, your choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Tom Price, running around the country pushing the idea of ending federal funding for state supported Medicaid.



When Ryan couldn’t line up the votes to repeal and replace because he couldn’t get the Republican conservative caucus and the so-called moderates to agree on almost anything, you brilliantly persuaded him to schedule a showdown vote on the matter.

Then, when Ryan still couldn’t get the needed votes, he ignominiously pulled the bill, and stood before the American people, tail between his legs, an abject failure, explaining that it was a new Congress that was not ready to govern.

I really have to hand it to you. What a brilliant strategy: You told the public that Obamacare is “complicated.” When repeal and replace failed to even come up for a vote, you courageously blamed both the Republican conservative caucus and Democrats. You even managed to convince much of the country that failing to repeal and replace was a reflection of a chaotic, undisciplined, unwise, and uninformed White House with you at the center of the storm.

A huge mistake said the elites. A major blow to your prestige as repeal and replace went down in flames. Rubbish.

Actually, you had a devilishly clever plan all along. You could see the future of a repeal and replace program while all the lamebrains were caught up in the moment; have Price run around pitching the Ryan Plan on television shows. Enjoy the spectacle of the Democrats helplessly flailing about and Ryan hoofing it between the House Republicans and your offices.

Hard to believe they just pegged you as a mean spirited, thin-skinned, overextended real estate promoter with a drowning casino business and serial bankruptcies, who didn’t score real money until you monitized the Trump Brand on hotels and golf courses. “Sad,” you would say.

Here’s what you knew that Speaker Ryan never understood even after all those years in the House and running for vice-president back in 2012: The American people are not stupid. After all, that’s why they voted for you!

The American people know that Obamacare, for all its shortcomings, provided life-saving medical care to millions of underserved Americans. They knew that the Medicaid expansion program, a core component of Obamacare, provided medical, mental health, and substance abuse benefits for a segment of the population that would otherwise go without. They knew that over 20 million Americans would lose health benefits if Obamacare was repealed and not replaced with an even better medical care system.

Like I said, and you well know, the typical American wants a robust safety net, readily available to those who need it. After all, it’s a mirror reflecting back on our imperfectly achieved foundational values as a nation.

Average Americans know it’s the plutocrats, the corporatists, the high-flying CEOs who make more in a day than they earn in a lifetime, the elites as you would call them, that are peddling the fake economics (See “Economism” by James Kwak and “An American Sickness” by Elisabeth Rosenthal) of repeal and replace.

You see, the liberal, bicoastal, elitist press see you as a petty, nasty narcissist, incapable of genuine empathy. Boy, are they wrong.

Only you, President Trump, have the wisdom and foresight to make it seem that you would end Obamacare, all the while knowing that the best plan for all Americans is to improve it.

By so brilliantly engineering the failure of repeal and replace you have created an opportunity to fulfill another promise you made, to provide “insurance for everybody.”

Keep up the good work.


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