Seeking a replacement ethical analysis of support for a replacement healthcare plan

After years of asserting that they intend to strike down or replace President Obama's Affordable Care Act, Republicans are struggling to come up with a replacement plan that can be passed. However, they cannot get consensus among their own party to vote for the replacement plan in the Senate. Why? Largely because the replacement plan is bad. It's unethical and Americans are uncomfortable with it.

If Americans eventually do get a replacement healthcare plan that resembles the current proposals, we will have a psychological need to rationalize it to ourselves. This means we'll need a replacement ethical analysis.

Here's the current analysis I've been seeing. It's not direct criticism of the details of the replacement plan but rather criticism of the character of people who would support such a policy approach. With strong words (and strong headlines) the Republicans are criticized:

"The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in a certain party’s political discourse is at once infuriating and terrifying."
(Kayla Chadwick, "I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People," Huffington Post, June 26)

"Republicans...have repeatedly broken their promises and defied public opinion in order to release health care bills that cut spending on the poorest Americans to fund massive tax cuts for the richest Americans....at some point, we need to take them at their word: This is what they believe...I want to see a better, more decent conservatism drive the Republican Party. I don’t want to believe that this is the bottom line of GOP policy thinking. But this is clearly the bottom line of GOP policy thinking."
(Ezra Klein, It turns out the liberal caricature of conservatism is correct," Vox, June 29)

"Whether it passes or not, however, remember this moment. For this is what modern Republicans do; this is who they are."
(Paul Krugman, "Understanding Republican cruelty," New York Times, June 30)

I do not want to believe this ethical analysis either but I do not have a replacement analysis.

2024

The Washington Post was the only one out of five of the top newspapers to cover in print Vance’s indication that Trump would gut the Affordable Care Act, reversing protections for seniors and people with preexisting conditions www.mediamatters.org/health-care/...

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— Media Matters for America (@mmfa.bsky.social) September 20, 2024 at 7:48 PM