What Bad Choice Are Republicans Facing in the House of Representatives?
The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the American Health Care Act today. This puts the Republican representatives in a quandary. Is this Sophie’s choice? Hobson’s Choice? The garden diversity dilemma? Let’s take a look.
The Democrats will find it easier with this vote: they and most of their voters prefer the ACA to the new bill, so they can safely vote against. But many Republicans, including incumbent President Trump, have advocated the end of Obamacare. They pointed out that health care and health insurance are not “affordable” as prices and premiums rise every year, and implied that repealing the law would somehow solve the problem.
The problem is that canceling ACA will increase the cost of insurance for many people – and people who see their premiums go down will see their other health care costs go up. So even Republican representatives are faced with angry voters who have a lot to lose with the ACA being canceled. If they vote for the AHCA, repeal law, these representatives may not do well in the 2018 election.
On the other hand, the AHCA does not completely abolish Obamacare . It still requires insurers to cover certain people and conditions, and it still provides subsidies to help people buy insurance. Some Republicans believe that the government should not participate in health insurance at all, so they dislike AHCA for the opposite reason to these angry voters: they say it is not far enough away and should push for a complete abolition.
In short, no one likes this bill , but Republicans campaigned to end Obamacare, so many feel obligated to implement it by voting in favor. President Trump is also putting pressure on them, saying that he will “come for” anyone who votes “no” because “losing is unacceptable,” and canceling Obamacare was a fight he planned to win.
So what choice do they have? Here are some of the possibilities:
- A dilemma is a choice between two different but equally unpleasant options . (These are the horns of the dilemma.)
- At Sophie’s choice, you burn the bridge: choosing one option means that the other will be destroyed forever. (Sophie had to choose which of her two children to go to the labor camp with her, knowing the other would be executed.)
- Hobson’s pick is a take or leave situation. You get the horse that Thomas Hobson offers you , or you don’t get the horse at all.
- Morton’s fork is better known as a logical fallacy , but it can also describe choice . You have two options, but both will lead to the same bad consequences.
- When double binding, someone gets conflicting messages . If one message is true, the other must be false.
If Republicans in the House of Representatives vote today, they will anger their constituents, possibly lose their jobs, and ultimately see their constituency experience deteriorating health.
If they vote no, they will fail to deliver on their campaign promises, disappointing voters who hoped that repealing the law would bring cheaper insurance. They would anger President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and possibly some of their Republican counterparts.
I see a dilemma here: two bad choices. Paul Ryan may be trying to give members of the House of Representatives a Hobson choice by insisting that they vote on the bill without trying to address its obvious problems. Representatives may also feel they are in a double quandary when they hear that the law is both too liberal and too conservative.
What do you think? What exactly are the bad choices facing Republicans in the House of Representatives?