Concerning Gingrich: “Yes, Trump has a health care plan”

I’d like to cover a recent article written by Alternate Historical Fiction Novelist and freelance House Representative, Newt Gingrich. His books actually aren’t that bad. His policies and general duplicity / subterfuge over the course of his service and subsequent politics advocacy are pretty bad.

But that’s Ad Hominem. So, let’s deviate from that. Specifically I’m reviewing this article that The Hill, which I usually like, somehow permitted for publication:

http://thehill.com/.../518584-yes-trump-has-a-health-care...

It poses a broad list of things the Trump Administration has accomplished to refute Biden’s claims that “there was no plan” to fix healthcare.

I’ll even admit, there are things in there that were sorely needed. Public costs and lowering prescription drug prices, for example: good stuff.

There are a lot of “buts” and “yes, howevers” to this list. I’ll address a few of the bullet points that bother me most, but there’s a broader topic that needs to be addressed first and is much more important. I’ll even ignore the fact that Gingrich, the House member who mandated disseminating name calling and conspiracy accusations from his fellow congressmen to obstruct and misinform the public of the Democratic Party ( https://www.theatlantic.com/.../newt-gingrich.../570832/ ), didn’t bother to list a single source in his article. He’s commonly referred to as the first Republican to weaponize misinformation and obstructionism across an entire party. Don’t listen to Gingrich, and don’t give him clicks on his sites or op-eds. He’s one of the worst politicians in the history of our country in regards to having a functioning, bipartisan branch of government.

Whoops, Ad Hominem again. I’ll recede from that digression.

Gingrich asserts, “Joe Biden’s assertion during Tuesday’s debate that President Trump does not have a health care plan is flat out false. … Everything that President Trump has done in health care since then has been consistent with the vision laid out in the document.”

Every item on that list, barring a few, he accomplished through Executive Orders. None were thoroughly vetted for efficacy and legal standing by the congress at large. They skipped the Legislative branch of our government. Piecemeal executive orders for a topic so large are problematic for a few reasons.

First and foremost, they are disjointed, mutable, and unpredictable. Executive orders are quickly signed and quickly overturned. They lack the cohesiveness of a broad, bipartisan passed plan.

Second, they undermine the responsibility of the Legislative branch of government. Yes, this is an old subject. But usually it’s done to take swift action on a crisis to be backed by the Judicial branch and legislated upon soon after, like DACA. But the Republican senate became so paralyzed by spite of one another and the Democratic Party that they couldn’t actually “replace” the ACA, only hobble it by removing the individual mandate as a coattail to a phony tax reform. So, the Trump administration took matters into their own hands instead. It’s a textbook example of overreach and should NOT be an example of success. Now instead of one document to read on the current health care system, we have to read through ACA, a dozen executive orders, and a fucking Tax bill to actually have clarity.

If they actually replaced it using lessons learned from a large-scale implementation of Mitt Romney’s healthcare system labeled the ACA, I think that would be awesome. I assume many Dems would agree, on the condition that the system ensured a socialized system to provide baseline care. But they didn’t. They just purposely made it worse. Then Trump in frustration had to “revamp” it. I would be curious to review the main co-authors of those EOs to see who was involved but it’s frankly exhausting to do so.

These EOs are more a magnifying glass to the current failed state of the Republican Party, who had majorities in both the house and senate at the time, than they are “accomplishments”.

Third, from a tactical perspective, executive orders obscure the system and make it difficult to influence public opinion. Gingrich’s edgelord article assails that media outlets ignored the “plan” being implemented. Everything was done separately, it shouldn’t be an outlet’s responsibility to re-contextualizd every EO with the dozen preceding ones to make the health system cogent. It’s the responsibility of our leaders. The House, to their credit, did present a cohesive plan. There needed to be a bill that actually presented the Repeal AND the Replace of the plan so media could effectively cover it and help the public understand. The Senate, led by “Grim Reaper” McConnell, who could have accomplished it if he chose to work with 5 centrist Democrats, did his usual obstruction. Don’t take my word for it, research McConnell to see how proud he his of his tactics.

There is no vision anymore. There is no consistency. It’s run like an Agile project where the nation’s healthcare system is blunted and redirected towards a vague goal. That works in software development, but not to run a country. Especially without the explicit consent of the branch of government meant to construct these changes.

I’ll wax poetic on the most egregious or misleading bullet points in the comments thread of this post, since it’s long enough already. Truth matters.