Normally, we focus pretty explicitly on local and urban issues in this space. But I found Jared Hunter’s latest — a post-mortem of sorts on national health care — to directly connect to two debates I find myself having here in the city quite often. 1) what impact does national politics (and the move towards demonizing cities) have on cities? and 2) what roles should we expect the Democratic Party to play in this new climate?
Last week, the House of Representatives scheduled a vote to begin the process of approving President Trump’s healthcare bill; the scheduling of the vote was intentional as today marks the seven-year anniversary of the signing into law of Obamacare on March 23, 2010. Of the 237 House Republicans able to vote on the bill, 215 votes were needed to pass it. Leading up to the vote, there was a lot of speculation around whether the White House even had the appropriate number of votes to push the bill forward. This was the result of an unusual split between ideologies felt toward the bill: 1) Democrats and moderate Republicans simply thought the bill was just too awful to vote for, and 2) more staunchly right-leaning conservatives didn’t feel that the Trump healthcare kept its promise of fully undoing Obamacare.
While the bill does propose quite a few ambitious repeals of certain aspects of Obamacare, in playing devil’s advocate and confirming the opinion held by those more extreme conservatives, Trump has not kept his word on completely repealing the Affordable Care Act. Here is a quick recap of the essential revisions of Obamacare that would take effect if the Trump healthcare bill were approved in Congress:
*Sorry for the invasive “click here” symbol in the bottom left corner – it leads to a more detailed version of how exactly Obamacare would be affected in the case that the American Healthcare Act were approved; you can take a look at the article here.
With the recent developments of today’s turmoil surrounding President Trump’s failed attempt at reducing the Affordable Care Act to simple rubble, one point that came to mind while sifting through readings, posts, articles, and every drop of information I could grasp: Democrats cannot use this as political leverage. After all that has occurred to the Democratic party in the last 365 days, the last thing that liberals – especially young liberals still fuming from an extremely deliberate attempt to sabotage the candidate they favored – want to see is entrenched Democrats using the Republican’s legislative fumbling today as a reason to stick around and remedy the country’s woes. There is no reason the logical “holier than thou” sentiment should be felt from any angle of any Democratic response to the events that transpired today around the American Healthcare Act because no “woke” Democrat believes this. We already know that Republicans will inevitably and immediately refute any claims from the other side of the isle that conservatives don’t know what they’re doing and should step aside. What we don’t yet know is how exactly Democrats will respond though I have a pretty good idea.
Now of course it goes without saying that the far-right perspective of completely gutting Obamacare is abhorring. A projected 24 million Americans nationwide would lose coverage, rates and premiums would increase dramatically for low and moderate income families who currently receive subsidies to offset inflated healthcare costs, among other travesties for everyday Americans receiving support in their healthcare coverage and its costs through Obamacare. What’s more unsettling is that just today while convening with the House Freedom Caucus (the leaders of the hardline push in dismantling the ACA), President Trump agreed to their demands in stripping basic benefits of healthcare such as emergency services and mental health visits. The president’s assertive nature in addressing so many issues highlighted during his campaign and the subsequent confusing lack of follow through as well as concession to other appointed leaders’ opposing views has set in as what will be an overall undoing of legitimacy from the White House for the next three years and nine months.
Nonetheless, and as I stated earlier, now is not the time for Democrats to swoop in and try to save the day. As a Millennial myself, there is still a lot of resentment towards and distrust in the Democratic National Committee and the overall party establishment at the moment, and I know I am not the only one that feels this way. It would be easy for the party to sweep the dirty primary election of last year under the rug to in the face of contemporary trip ups across the aisle, but this is exactly what Democrats and Republicans have always done – mess up and conduct damage control or laugh at the opposing side when they mess up and conduct damage control. Admiral Grace Hopper once said, “The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’” If there’s one thing that this current political climate we’re in has taught us, (especially younger folks like myself on the cusp of now becoming today’s and no longer tomorrow’s leaders) it’s that everything that we do from here on out in our democracy needs to change.
(I just thought this picture was too funny to leave out since we’re discussing the healthcare bill!)
Jared Hunter is a current student at Rutgers-Camden pursuing his Masters in Public Administration in the community development track. His research focus includes disparities between marginalized communities and local governments as well as community development centers and anchor institutions.
Jared has lived in South Jersey all his life; growing up in Williamstown, and moving to Woodbury after his sophomore year of high school, he’s personally experienced many facets of public life and the inner workings of New Jersey politics for the last five years.
An alum of University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Jared was originally a pharmacology major hoping to find cures for diseases through tailoring medication to meet specific genetic needs. After his second year of college, he found that his heart lived more in connecting and building relationships with people, and he received his Bachelors of Science in Humanities in Science in May 2016.
While on campus, Jared founded and presided over one of the first political science clubs where the group hosted Philadelphia council members, conducted community public forums, developed and held a local Model United Nations, and welcomed the Consul of Sierra Leon to campus to discuss the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Jared has lived and worked in the city of Camden since the summer with his girlfriend and three-legged dog, Sadie. He loves being out in the community hearing and learning about people’s unique stories over a cup of coffee or a nice lager after work hours.
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