Dear Editor:
Republicans are resurrecting their effort to repeal Obamacare, and I have a question for Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer: Are you willing to "do the right thing?" That's what Republican Sen. John McCain did last July when he cast the deciding vote against the savage Republican health care plan.
McCain is an 80-year-old veteran who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five years and is now suffering from brain cancer. He stood up to direct personal pressure from President Trump, Vice President Pence, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, and House Speaker Ryan. He told them all he would "do the right thing" and vote no on the plan.
McCain urged his fellow Republicans to work across the aisle and build a healthcare system designed to benefit Americans not just score political points or hew to party ideology. This is part of what he meant by doing the right thing. So my question to Mr. Luetkemeyer is, will you "do the right thing" and work across the aisle for a reasonable healthcare system?
One thing that was wrong with the Republican plan that McCain voted against was that it abolished the individual mandates, the requirement that every individual be covered by health insurance. Without this requirement, a great many healthy people would not sign up for insurance. Insurance companies would be left covering sicker people and insurance costs and premiums would rise to a point where almost no one could afford them.
It is crucial to keep younger, healthier people in the insurance pool and the individual mandates do that. Yet all Republican proposals so far scrap these mandates. That is a good part of what they mean by repealing Obamacare.
There are important fixes and improvements that can be made to Obamacare without gutting it, and that is what needs to be done. But it can only be done by congressmen and senators who are willing to do the right thing and put the interests of the people before personal or party interests and certainly before the interests of a president who seeks nothing more than adoration, riches and power.