In a phone interview two hours ago, President Trump himself told the Washington Post "we pulled it" but "I don't blame Paul [Ryan.]" An hour earlier, former Speaker Newt Gingrich rhetorically tweeted, "Why would you schedule a vote on a bill that is at 17% approval?" (referring to yesterdays Quinnipiac poll showing 52% of voters oppose and only 17% support the Obamneycare repeal/replace, a roughly 3:1 ratio.)

The good news for Republicans is that they will not have this bill doing to them in 2018 what Obamneycare itself did to huge Dem congressional majorities in 2010. From a cynical, purely strategic, perspective, the president, Speaker and the rest of Republicans stripping 24 million people of health insurance then passing a millionaires-only tax cut a year before the midterm elections would have been the best thing that could have happened to Democratic politicians.

That is pretty much the ONLY good news though; insurance companies were already steadily raising the price of healthcare they DO NOT ACTUALLY PROVIDE, and Trumps stated "Plan B" of "let Obamacare fail and blame Democrats" looks doable. Regardless of what did or did not happen this week, his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price (R-GA,) will continue slashing both Obamneycares funding and the federal regulations requiring insurers pay at least a minimum of their profits to ensure sick people access to doctors.

In other words, we still have nothing like universal healthcare, and the cost of what we DO have will continue skyrocketing since insurers have all incentive to continue hiking prices and no deterrent. They will no longer receive a windfall from taxpayers for people who must buy but cannot afford increasingly costly insurance, but those people will simply be exempt for just that reason. Maybe insurers will no longer be forced to spend 80% of revenue actually PAYING FOR HEALTHCARE (because that is like, THEIR JOB,) or to raise ALL premiums/deductibles or NONE (rather than resume pricing seriously ill patients out of the insurance market with "assigned risk pools" that defeat the whole point of insurance pooling risk and resources.) But just because Republicans failed to make a fatally flawed system impossibly WORSE cannot make it any BETTER.

All that is missing now is a tweet from Mexican President Enrique Nieto:

"Sorry, President Trump, Mexico will not pay for your border wall—we bought our 132 million citizens universal healthcare you cannot afford."

Likewise, Brazil made healthcare an explicit constitutional right for its 204½ million citizens, just as multiple EU countries have for half a BILLION citizens. Even the Russian Constitution guarantees ALL 111 million citizens healthcare, costing 6.5% of GDP (as opposed to THREE TIMES as much in the US) with roughly half paid by the government. So tell me again how that "only works in countries much smaller than the US." Because that is the problem with pooling risks and resources: It only works with SMALL populations....

shrugs Oh, well: The United States of America has fallen behind the EU, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Russia, but at least we are keeping pace with China and India. Maybe the US should withdraw from the G8 and apply for admission as a BRICS nation. #MAGA

"Good night and good luck," RAFOlk....