I suppose, from a certain perspective, that of a right-wing ideologue, the source of opposition to Trumpcare is "the usual suspects." All the Democrats in the House and Senate. The biased, liberal media. The authors of articles in The New England Journal of Medicine. The plurality of American voters who cast ballots for Trump's opponent and gave her more than a 2.8 million popular vote victory. Weepy Hollywood elites like Jimmy Kimmel. Et cetera.
There are also, however, the amicus briefs submitted to the court of public opinion by various health-care "stakeholders." These would include, for example, the associations formed by an array of interest groups, including especially those representing professionals working in the health-care industry. Many of these groups seem comparatively immune to the usual smears--not the NAACP, perhaps, which opposes the Senate bill that will be voted on when senators reconvene in July, but how about the following roster of opponents: the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the American Hospital Association, the Catholic Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Cancer Association, and the American Medical Association (AMA)?
All these foam-flecked liberals! It's hard to get them into the same corral with the usual suspects.
The opposition of the AMA seems to me particularly difficult to dismiss. It's membership--doctors--is made of people with high incomes who would be the beneficiaries of the tax cuts that Trumpcare seeks to bankroll. More pointed, however, are the particular terms in which the Association criticizes the bill. Here is the first paragraph of the letter sent to Senator McConnell by James Madara, the Executive Vice President and CEO of the AMA:
I am writing to express our opposition to the discussion draft of the "Better Care Reconciliation Act" released on June 22, 2017. Medicine has long operated under the precept of Primum non nocere, or "first, do no harm." The draft legislation violates that standard on many levels.
"First, do no harm"--it is, or ought to be, a conservative principle. But in our country the "conservative" political party may more aptly be described as reckless and irresponsible. They've been shouting and waving their arms about Obamacare for so long that they now have to do something. It's possible they may harm millions of Americans in order not to lose face.
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