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Quiet American wins

Donald Trump has suffered an abject failure, of a kind that has thrown up the fissures which had plagued the…

Quiet American wins

Representational Image (PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES)

Donald Trump has suffered an abject failure, of a kind that has thrown up the fissures which had plagued the ruling Republican party even during the primaries. The rift between moderates and hardliners is now more pronounced. America will, after all, take care of  Obamacare, the signal initiative of his predecessor. And the House Speaker, Paul Ryan’s bold assertion that Obamacare will be the  “law of the land”  for what he calls the “forseeable future” cannot but be unnerving for Mr. Trump. In a quirky expression of political irony, the rift in the ruling party has served to uphold  Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Trump’s virulent opposition, that stretched for seven years, is in tatters. In the event, the legislation has neither been repealed nor replaced. It has been a famous victory of the people, if the jubilation by hundreds of thousands of  Americans, notably the poorest and the disabled, is any indication. This vulnerable segment in the US would have lost access to healthcare if  Trump’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) had been successful.  Fears that it would have been neither affordable nor caring are not wholly unfounded.  The failure has been as personal as legislative; the second has been an imponderable in a divided Congress.  For all the orchestrated opposition to what Obama had achieved in the health segment,  the new health bill failed to garner the necessary votes to be passed in the House. This was in part because rightwing hardliners wanted an even harsher version. The debacle has stunned the White House, and  the people’s victory can be contextualised with the triumph of Obama’s public health policy. It comes after months of anxiety and fear at what would unfold if  Trump’s new legislation were passed.  The short point was obvious to all sections of  civil society ~ the ordinary citizens would suffer. Across the country, individuals and groups rose to oppose it, highlighting the potentially devastating consequences for access to reproductive health services and the disproportionate impact on low-income women and children. One could almost hear a collective sigh of relief over the withdrawal of the legislation that was on the anvil. Going by projections of the Congressional Budget Office, an estimated  24 million people would have lost their health cover in the next decade if the Trump legislation had materialised. This would have been matched with ballooning insurance premia and tax breaks to the rich.

The quiet American has won, after all. His voice has been heard. For all that, the healthcare debate will continue for sometime yet.  Health insurance remains prohibitively expensive for many and even with the advances of Obamacare, it is not a universal system.  For now, the sick and the dying as well as the lame and the halt have won a critical round.

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