NOBODY'S FAULT BUT MINE

Republicans used to brag about being the party of personal responsibility.  Maybe back in the Eisenhower era.  But for the entirety of the 21st century, Republicans have been the party of “don’t blame me, it’s someone else’s fault.”  After the September 11 terrorists attacks, Condoleezza Rice said, “I don't think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center.”  Well, except for the CIA, which briefed the Bush administration seven times prior to 9/11 on that very possibility.

In 2005, George W. Bush tried to excuse his administration’s shoddy performance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by claiming that “nobody anticipated the breach of the levees” in New Orleans.  Well, except for the experts whose frantic warnings about that very possibility were ignored by Republican bureaucrats.

And now, Donald Trump has joined the choir, claiming that “No one knew health care could be so complicated.”  Well, except for every non-Republican who has ever dealt with the issue of health care.

But the truth is that the main health care complication Republicans face is that they don’t want to provide it for Americans.  It hasn’t been too complicated for Canada, the UK, France, Australia, Israel, or pick literally any other industrialized nation in the entire world.  Every one of them – every single one –as a national health care system.  Except the United States. 

As I watch Republicans flounder as they try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, I remember the European river cruise my wife and I took in the summer of 2015.  There were about 150 passengers on our boat, and 80% of them were Americans.  In the evenings after dinner, there were educational programs about the places we were passing through, and one of them featured a German fellow talking about Bavaria.  When he mentioned that health care was free, many of the Americans were dumbfounded. 

“Wait.  If I got sick on German soil, you’d treat me without charge?” one of them asked.  Certainly, came the reply.  “Even something big, like a heart attack?”  Certainly.  “Even though I don’t pay taxes in Germany?”  Certainly. 

Incredulous murmurs rippled throughout the crowd.  People were shaking their heads in confusion.  It was too much to process.  Americans generally accept that national, state, or local governments (with revenue from taxes of various kinds) pay for public safety (military, police, fire), public education, and basic public infrastructure (roads, public utilities like water and electricity).  But they can’t wrap their heads around the possibility that a similar model might work for health care.

There are two reasons, I believe, why the so-called greatest nation in the world is an outlier on national health care.  The first is greed.  Big Medicine and Big Pharma won’t settle for being merely rich.  No, they’re driven to be mega-wealthy, and they’d rather let people get sick and die than sacrifice any revenue.  The second reason is plain, old-fashioned racism.  Before the huge wave of 21st century immigration to Europe and elsewhere, the countries that implemented national health care systems were fairly homogeneous. 

In America, there has always been “us” and “them.” The first “thems” were the indigenous peoples we killed off or drove away so that we could appropriate their land.  The second group of “thems” were the African slaves we imported to do our work, followed in the 19th and 20th centuries by laborers from other parts of the globe who did the work that regular Americans like “us” didn’t want to do – build railroads, pick crops, wash dishes, whatever.  We were willing to let “those people” do our unpleasant jobs, but they weren’t ever going to be one of us.

During that latter period, we also acquired some refugees.  Some of them fled famine in Ireland.  Others fled religious persecution in Eastern and Central Europe.   A lot of “us” back in those days didn’t much like the Irish, the Italians, and the rest, especially the Eastern European Jews.  They all talked funny and tended to be clannish.  But we found ways to assimilate them.  Instead of building a wall to keep them out, we erected a statue in New York Harbor, welcoming them.  They were white, after all. 

Now we have a new wave of workers and refugees who also talk funny and tend to be clannish.  But they’re from brown countries, not white ones.  For the diehard “us vs. them” folks in the Republican Party, that’s all the difference in the world. 

The internal battle that the Republican Party is waging right now over Obamacare repeal is being fought on those two battlefields.   Paul Ryan and Team GOP want to fund huge tax cuts for the rich by gutting health benefits for everyone.  Steve Bannon and Team Trump want to establish a racist welfare state, maintaining benefits for white people while cutting those same benefits for minorities. 

What's a poor Republican Congressman to do?  No one knew it would be this hard.  No one could have foreseen.  It was impossible to predict.  But at least they can take solace in the fact that all of their problems are someone else's fault.