In the first evidently serious fracture with the Trump White House since November’s shock election result, the alt-right website, Breitbart, whose former boss, Steve Bannon was Donald Trump’s election campaign supremo and is now his senior policy adviser, has broken ranks with Trump over his plans to replace Obamacare with a one per cent-friendly health plan largely constructed by the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan.
Ryan is an enthusiastic disciple of the libertarian heroine and advocate of unrestrained free market capitalism, Ayn Rand. Breitbart, by contrast, advocates a philosophy characterised by a mix of American nationalism and populism.
Breitbart puts forward seven reason why the Trump-Ryan health plan will ‘hand power back to the Democrats’ in the 2018 mid-term Congressional elections and could see Elizabeth Warren beat Trump in the presidential election of 2020.
Amongst the reasons given for the likely disastrous consequences of a health plan that has already been dubbed ‘Trumpcare’, is the increased cost of healthcare insurance for Trump’s rust-belt base:
‘As an analysis conducted by the Washington Postshows, voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin will see their tax credits decrease under Obamacare 2.0. “If you’re a 40-year-old making $75,000 a year, you’re going to get a 75 percent or higher increase to your tax credits—a beneficial situation for you,” the Post explains. “If, however, you’re a 60-year-old making $30,000 a year, you’re going to see a reduction in those tax credits’.
The website added:
If passed in its current form, the GOP’s Obamacare 2.0 bill will impose brutal costs Americans still struggling to make it through a great recession—particularly President Donald Trump’s base—and risk handing Congress and the presidency back to Democrats.
Some estimates of the number of people likely to lose healthcare coverage under Trumpcare are as high as fifteen million.
You can read the full Breitbart article here.
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