Could We Get Less Hacky Showrunners Please

Since they already of the auteur of a horrible, less popular-than-pancreatic-cancer plan on board, why shouldn’t the Republican health care team be joined by a literal Medicare fraudster:

S. Sen. Rick Scott is taking the lead on Republican health care policy as the Trump administration tries once again to end Obamacare.

President Trump named Scott and fellow GOP U.S. Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana as his point people on Capitol Hill at a question-and-answer session at the White House.

“They are going to come up with something really spectacular,” Trump told reporters Thursday.

Scott’s new role is a long way from his political origins in 2009 and 2010, when as one of the earliest critics of Obamacare, he launched ads arguing that pre-existing condition protections would cause premiums to skyrocket.

Scott also was the CEO of the hospital company Columbia/HCA in the 1990s, who resigned four months after a federal inquiry into the company was made public. The company was later fined $1.7 billion in 2000 and 2007 for what was then the largest case of Medicare fraud in history.

I had a recent thread on this, but I remain amazed at the sheer number of convoluted reasons people come up with to deny the very obvious fact that Republicans are opposed to broadly available comprehensive health insurance on principle. (“It’s about how they hate Obama, which is why they universally opposed…Bill Clinton’s 1993 proposal!” “It’s about the insurance donors, which is why…they have sabotaged the ACA in ways insurance companies hate!”) Look, it’s very simple: the national Republican offer to the uninsured is “nothing” and their offer to the insured is “most of you should have worse insurance or no insurance at all.” It’s really not complicated.