There’s probably a joke circulating the internet at this point that the Trump Regime keeps promising to scrap the Affordable Care Act in favor of literally anything that is not called “Obamacare” and continuously fails. In twenty years, Social Studies teachers will have to teach about the Trump Era and use this fact to describe what it is like to live in a time and place like the present. There have been no less than three attempts to “Repeal and Replace” the Affordable Care Act since President Trump’s inauguration in January, and not a single one has passed through both the House and the Senate.

On Thursday, October 12, President Trump signed an executive order on healthcare which will essentially cause the insurance markets to unravel. This means that people will have less coverage and will receive fewer benefits for the same costs by refusing to use the Executive Branch to pay the insurance companies for aid, which will force the Legislative branch to decide how to pay for it instead. Judging by the White House’s statement, this is an ultimatum for Congress: if you don’t get cracking on the Healthcare front, everyone will suffer. Rather like  when you’re not completing your homework to a satisfactory level, your parents take away the electronic devices on which you do the homework in the first place to ensure that you will do as much of your homework as possible. Only now, of course, there are millions of lives hanging in the balance.  

There’s no real way of knowing whether or not Mr. Trump fully appreciates the gravity of this executive order, but it’s very clear that our lawmakers do. Both parties have urged the president to continue paying the insurance companies, as Mr. Trump has been disgruntledly doing since January. Many patients, doctors, hospital executives, and state insurance regulators aren’t terribly pleased by this new development, either, according to the New York Time’s article detailing all of this. In fact, it appears that the only people pleased by this order are House Speaker Paul Ryan and the White House. How comforting.  

The vast majority of the GOP’s health care plans that they’ve come up with since Trump’s inauguration in January have done far less to help the people who need health care- those with pre-existing conditions, the elderly, the disabled, and people with low incomes. This means that the people the Affordable Care Act was created to help would have to pay more for the same coverage that they’ve been receiving while the ACA has been in effect.

A victory for the White House, it seems. We’re living in the End Times, friends.