(THE GUARDIAN) Ross Barkan, May 5, 2017 — If the mythology of Paul Ryan, cerebral and considerate policy wonk, survives 4 May, it will truly be a miracle. Or just another marker of the punditocracy’s unshakeable idiocy.

Ryan’s Republican Congress, after trying and failing to hold a vote on a repeal of the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) in March, has rounded up the votes to pass the American Health Care Act, perhaps the worst piece of life-altering legislation to ever see the light of day.

This bill won over a few so-called moderate Republicans because it now includes an amendment that would allow states to waive an ACA rule that forbids charging sick people higher insurance prices, as long as the states set up a special insurance pool for those people. The amount of money allocated for this? A paltry $8bn.

A quick recap: Ryan’s legislation (calling it Donald Trump’s bill gives too much credit to a man wholly disinterested in anything that smells of policy) will scrap the ACA’s mandate to buy health insurance, substantially cut Medicaid, and hope somehow this doesn’t cause premiums to skyrocket.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that 24 million Americans would lose their health insurance under a version of the legislation considered in March. The CBO hasn’t had the time to score this bill. Republicans aren’t interested in finding out just how much of a disaster they’re going to inflict on regular people. They have a campaign pledge to fulfill, after all.

Were an alien to wander down to Earth and examine the functionality of American democracy in 2017, it would find an intellectual graveyard. Lawmakers tasked with carefully considering remarkably complex legislation with the potential to significantly alter the lives of millions of people are instead rushing to vote for a bill that they know almost nothing about and that no outside expert has had the time to seriously assess. This is insanity.

Source: America’s healthcare is being driven off a cliff by nihilists | Ross Barkan | Opinion | The Guardian