Republicans Are Lying to Sell a Bill That Will Kill People

Yesterday, I noted Greg Sargent's keen observation that Republicans are going to "extraordinary lengths" to conceal that the Affordable Care Act has helped countless people: "If you think about it, pretty much every major lie that [Donald] Trump and Republicans are telling right now to get their repeal-and-replace bill passed is designed to cover it up." Yep.

And oh the lies they are telling as part of that grand obfuscation! Like, for example, this trash:

Frequent GOP talking point in Senate hallways: +22M won't be "losing" health insurance, they'll be "choosing" to go without. https://t.co/o4Anh6DY5i

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) July 6, 2017

Republican Senator John Cornyn responded to that tweet thus:

Has virtue of being true. People will buy what they value. https://t.co/L1Ia3IxUol

— JohnCornyn (@JohnCornyn) July 6, 2017

People will buy what they value. Okay. Except surely Cornyn has heard that there are millions of people in this country who struggle occasionally or often or always to meet all of their basic needs.

When someone has to choose between paying rent, paying an insurance premium, or buying a metro card to get to work, because they can't afford all three, something has to give, and it isn't because they don't value all three of those things.

It's not that Cornyn doesn't know this, of course. He knows. But he would simply tell another lie to obfuscate this truth: The lie that any person in the United States can bootstrap their way out of need.

To listen to Cornyn and his reprehensible cronies tell it, anyone who is lacking essentials just isn't working hard enough.

Never mind that Cornyn and his reprehensible cronies are responsible for undercutting labor laws, empowering corporate greed, busting unions, and ignoring the cost to workers of automation for decades, which has made jobs with livable wages ever more scarce.

Lie upon lie upon lie — all to sell a bill that will kill people, and cause an awful lot of unnecessary suffering. Including among countless children, many of whose parents voted for Donald Trump. Whoops.

In related news: Margot Sanger-Katz reports at the New York Times that "Ted Cruz Has an Idea for How to Cover High-Risk Patients." And guess what? It's garbage.