Brooks: AHCA Was Like Something Out of ‘1984’

On Friday’s broadcast of “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks criticized the American Health Care Act as a bill “like, out of ‘1984,’ which devastated the poor, $880 cut out of — $880 billion cut out of Medicaid, while enriching the rich, increasing the after-tax incomes of people making more than a million dollars by 14 percent.”

Brooks said, “Well, all those things contributed, Trump’s bad negotiation, lack of experience, the factionalism. And people talk about divisions within the party, blah, blah, blah, but this — the core problem was philosophical and intellectual. The problem was with the substance of the bill. We live in a country that has widening inequality, where there’s a lot of people very — being very insecure. And the Republicans could have taken some of their approaches, like the tax credits, like the health savings accounts, and a lot of things, and to deal with the country as it is, as, say, take those mechanisms, market mechanisms, to reduce costs, but to give people basic security and shore up the coverage that they have now. But, instead of doing that, they gave a bill that was, like, out of ‘1984,’ which devastated the poor, $880 cut out of — $880 billion cut out of Medicaid, while enriching the rich, increasing the after-tax incomes of people making more than a million dollars by 14 percent. So, this was like every stereotype of the Republican Party. And so it just did not fit the country. And the core problem for the Republicans is they can’t figure out what they want to govern.”

He later added that for Trump, “the smart lesson” from the AHCA is “try to govern the way you actually ran, which is not orthodox Republican, anything but.”

Brooks further argued that Obamacare isn’t going to explode, and “Republicans now own the healthcare system in this country. And so, it’s not like people are going to blame Barack Obama. He’s never going to be on the ballot again.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett