Hey Paul Ryan and company, it must truly suck to be you right now.
I'm not talking about the whole 'John Roberts... he... he just... he fucked us, man' business. (Although your rage-gasm has been very entertaining.) What I mean is that it must truly be a total mindfuck realizing that you are back on the hook. The Supreme Court didn't save your lyin' asses from having to actually come up with something other than empty "Repeal and Replace" bullshit and bluster. Now, you have to answer the questions about what it is, exactly, that you intend to replace the ACA with should you find a way to gut it down the line. You can't filibuster the interviewers with talking points anymore, because the quest for your specifics are not going away. Not now that you have to actually have to have something specific to say.
I saw you all today. On the Sunday morning gasbag-fests. "Repeal and Replace". "The American people will decide not the Supreme Court." But it was you, Paul Ryan, who truly took the cake. I saw you on ABC getting the usual cakewalk where you still looked as if you thought it was an inquisition from Mr. George Stephanopolis. What was that you said? "We don't need the ACA, because the Insurance Industry was moving towards (looks down, looks around, puts hand over his mouth speaks garbled nonsense too low to understand) anyway." Nice. But it's still not an answer. You can't get away with mouthing talking points and orally passing gas at this point, not when the onus is on you to spell it all out in detail.
Where's the alternative? Where's the plan?
The 'Replace' part of "Repeal and Replace"?
What. Is. It? Spill. Like BP. All over the place.
It must be a total bitch that almost every single Movement Conservative alternative to adopting a Single Payer healthcare plan for the U.S. is already inside the ACA. Not my problem. Not any of our problems that the hated "ObamaCare" is pretty much a collection of your ideas that you only hate because the black guy you didn't vote for put it together and Democrats passed it into law, and that's its the law of the land now that the Supremes have John Robertsed it.
I know!
You could simply tell us that you plan to kill the ACA, and then just re-pass it exactly as it is, er was. Only with a new name. ReaganCare! FreedomCare! Oh, wait. JesusCare!
No?
The things that are in the bill are "tainted"?
Well.
Huge problem that, Wingnuttia.
They used your ideas. Free Market-based. The Individual Mandate. Preserve the private for-profit health insurance industry. Create Incentives and Penalties to reward and punish good and bad behavior that might undermine the system. If you are truly as pissed off as you say you are, you better start picketing and disrupting Heritage Foundation Get-togethers and American Enterprise Institute lectures pronto. Because if you truly believe that the ACA is a 'Government Take-Over of Healthcare' and the 'Death of Freedom and Liberty as We've Known It' then that is who you should be going after.
You can call the ACA Marxism, Socialism, Communism. Whatever.
They used your ideas.
What are you gonna do?
Tout Single Payer?
(Please. Please tout Single Payer. We'll all agree to totally, totally pretend that we all really, really hate it. Until after the vote. And the signing ceremony. Promise.)
Well, whatever it is that you do, well, do you are going to have to do better than "hummana hummana hummana comprehensive... rubarb rubarb rubarb sweeping.... muah muah muah freedom." That shit won't fly. You need policy-based answers. Now. Today. Not at some hypothetical point in the future when the Glibertarian Eagle of Freedom sits on the broad shoulders of President Empty Suit with Quayle-To-Be-Named-Later at his side. (Mainly because that isn't going to happen. You guys might as well have gone with Santorum and died on that rock with somebody who believes your bullshit.)
Going back to the status quo ain't happening. So, you wingnut idiots better come up with something, or shut the fuck up about how the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute have unleashed Marxism on America. Oh wait. You don't say that. But it's the truth if this is what you truly believe. I look forward to a long, hot summer of bused-in goons, yokels, and yahoos disrupting AEI "resident scholars" blathering on (and on and on and on) on C-SPAN over the next two months. Tell them to bring the costumes. Especially the tri-corner hats. I love the tri-corner hats. Vastly superior to the usual white pillow-case hoods with those never really matching-up two eye-holes crudely cut into them.
Hey Paul Ryan and company, it must truly suck to be you right now.
Healthcare reform had to happen, because people using the emergeny room as their primary care physician was simply unsustainable with tens of millions of people doing it because they had no affordable access to care.
There is no going back to what was before, because that was breaking down.
So, get cracking. Or shut the fuck up and let us get on with the rest of our lives.