Little red wagon not needed for Roskam's Obamacare replacement

Back in 2009, my congressman Peter Roskam spent the entire year trying to derail the ultimately successful effort to insure Americans left behind the industrialized world's worst health care delivery system. The resulting Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided coverage for nearly 20 million uninsured, allowing them a semblance of a life removed from fear of unaffordable health issues, bankruptcy, even premature death. During the year long debate Roskam pulled a truly shabby publicity stunt to demean that noble campaign. He joined the heartless GOP chorus bemoaning the fact the ACA was over a thousand pages long, and, goodness, gracious, was simply too big to digest. To make his point, Roskam staged a photo op in which he loaded the proposed ACA bill onto a little red wagon, to demonstrate its massiveness. To the 20 million Americans who ultimately received relief from that massive bill, including 50,000 whose lives were saved, Roskam's stunt wasn't funny.

Eight years on Roskam continues to champion abolishing the ACA in which he's voted over 50 times to repeal, degrade, defund. But now that his party controls the presidency and the Congress, Roskam has to come up with a better alternative, in spite of ruling out the only viable alternative: single payer Medicare for all. Look closely and it's clear Roskam doesn't need a little red wagon to carry his ACA replacement to the Capitol steps. It fits easily into his imagination.