Donald Trump angry point and flag

The Literal Tropical Storm Don Is Strangely Similar to the Metaphorical One Caused by GOP Health Care Failure

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Ding dong, the GOP plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with something objectively worse is dead! That means lots of Republicans, including Donald Trump himself, are mad that they didn’t get to hurt the sick, poor, and elderly non-Congresspeople, all at the same time. And so, tropical storm Don rages—no, the real one.

It was already amusing, in a gallows humor sort of way, that there would be an actual tropical storm Don this year while the human version continues to wreak havoc on common decency, but the Universe didn’t stop there with its sense of irony. Sure enough, the weather-based tropical storm Don is about as effective as the real one, with the National Hurricane Center calling it “small” (we didn’t know storms had hands) and “not particularly well organized.”

Speaking of not well organized, the Republicans have now failed twice since Donald Trump took office, while also controlling both houses of Congress, to pass their terrible ACA replacement. It’s easy to see why Trump would be upset by that failure, after all of his very hard work on the subject including … golf, promoting events at his own businesses multiple times on Twitter, and playing with trucks for theatrics.

For the second time.

But don’t worry, he sprang into action this morning to save the health care system … by tweeting that Republicans should deliberately destroy it so that we have no choice but to accept whatever terrible “solution” they come up with to fix the problem they will have created. Yes, he’s again calling to “let Obamacare fail,” even though it won’t fail on its own, which is why he also suggested just repealing it outright with no replacement—a plan that probably won’t go anywhere in Congress, but that would be a disaster if it did.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called for the same thing, with—surprise!—a two-year delay that would hold of the effects of that action until after the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans are terrified of losing Congressional control in that election due to a public that was promised a better health care plan than the ACA and has yet to see one materialize, though Donald Trump is claiming they’d suddenly come up with one—after about seven years of failure to do so—if only a repeal went through.

The truth is that any plan that would actually be better for health care than the Affordable Care Act would also be less conservative, and part of the reason some Republicans wouldn’t back the existing replacement was that they thought it wasn’t conservative enough, so it’s hard to see how they could  be the party to get us there.

(image: Ildar vector / Shutterstock.com)

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Dan Van Winkle
Dan Van Winkle (he) is an editor and manager who has been working in digital media since 2013, first at now-defunct Geekosystem (RIP), and then at The Mary Sue starting in 2014, specializing in gaming, science, and technology. Outside of his professional experience, he has been active in video game modding and development as a hobby for many years. He lives in North Carolina with Lisa Brown (his wife) and Liz Lemon (their dog), both of whom are the best, and you will regret challenging him at Smash Bros.