The Trump administration has reversed course and opted to argue in Federal Court in New Orleans that the entire Affordable Care Act should be declared unconstitutional. There are reports that several members of his administration strongly urged him not to take this stance for fear of the political ramifications. But President Trump seems to be feeling emboldened by the Mueller Report that failed to find he had colluded with the Russians and couldn’t decide if he was guilty of Obstruction of Justice. So, he’s gone back on the attack on everything associated with President Obama, including his signature healthcare law.

Unfortunately, the President neglected to consult with congressional Republicans on this new strategy, meaning that they were suddenly facing the prospect of having the balance of the popular benefits of Obamacare being ripped away from their constituents. That would include protection for pre-existing conditions, keeping children on their parents’ policies until age 26 and more – all things Trump had promised to protect since his candidacy in 2016. It would also roll back the huge expansion of Medicaid coverage, which is how most newly-covered Americans are receiving care. And all this would happen without a viable replacement plan from the GOP in place, despite President Trump declaring that the Republican party would become “The Party of Healthcare”. To be fair, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander has been very active in trying to attack problems in healthcare ever since the original GOP effort fell apart in 2017. He has been working on prescription drug prices and having some low-level talks with Senate Democrats, but there has been little visible progress.

Democrats have gleefully siezed on this apparent misstep, bolstered by their recent victories in the mid-term elections that were seen to have been won largely on this issue alone. House Democrats had been working on a bill to “repair” deficiencies in the original Affordable Care Act, but their efforts have little chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate. The recently-elected members of the House and several Democratic candidates for President are publicly pressing for “Medicare for All” with few details on exactly what that would look like, much less how it would be paid for. In short, it’s “Situation Normal, All Fouled Up” for the Blue Team.

It seems that the country, and especially the President, have forgotten the reason why Senator McCain voted no on the GOP’s “skinny repeal” bill, which effectively killed the process. He objected to the GOP ramming the bill through the Congress on a strictly partisan basis as the Democrats had done with the Affordable Care Act. He was standing up for the traditions of the Senate, and I would like to believe he had come to the same conclusion that I have, which is that no healthcare legislation is going to survive for long unless both parties have some minimal level of buy-in. Whichever party succeeds today, their work will be undone as soon as the political pendulum swings back in the opposite direction.

Cock-eyed optimist that I am, I would hope that cooler heads would prevail and come together for a serious effort at a bi-partisan healthcare bill. But I’m also a realist who knows that there’s virtually no chance of that happening until after the 2020 elections, if at all. Minnesota’s own Senator Amy Klobuchar has been working hard on prescription drug prices, and there may be some progress on that front, but there’s virtually no chance of significant progress on overall healthcare coverage. For the foreseeable future, Democrats are happier to have the campaign issue than to make the kinds of compromises necessary to bring any Republican support on board.