Rep. Kinzinger Wants An Impossible Compromise On Health Care

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) is blaming the House Freedom Caucus for the defeat of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), and is allegedly calling on President Trump to form a new coalition with Democrats.

In a statement, Kinzinger said:

“I am disappointed in what happened this week and especially today, but I’m ready and willing to work with anyone, Republicans and/or Democrats, to fix our broken healthcare system and make it better for the American people. Our constitutional system makes it nearly impossible to push legislation that checks all of the boxes for one particular ideology. It’s why we work together, as a legislative branch, to put together legislation that best reflects the core interests of the American people. Issuing ultimatums and derailing progress is not in the interest of the American people, and a wholly self-serving tactic. The American people deserve better and we as a legislative body can do better. I look forward to that opportunity.”

The House Freedom Caucus just single-handedly saved #Obamacare.

— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) March 24, 2017

Kinzinger says GOP & POTUS must publicly take on HFC. “I’ve been keeping pretty quiet on internal divisions. Now we have to expose them.”

— Rebecca Berg (@rebeccagberg) March 25, 2017

Whether or not Kinzinger believes what he’s saying is impossible to know, but he’s playing from a very old script. This script says that Republicans and Democrats must “compromise” in order to make progress. However, compromise cannot be made when two sides hold diametrically opposed ideologies.

The Democrats want a public option; they want a health care system modeled after Canada or England. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was simply a step toward that end. Conservatives want a free-market system, one in which onerous regulations and unnecessary restrictions are erased, and competition drives down costs. When those two visions meet in the middle, you get the AHCA.

The AHCA was indeed a compromise; it was an unbalanced hybrid of socialized health care and minimal free-market principles. Such a chimera cannot survive. In this instance, compromise is untenable. The United States must go one way or the other – it cannot sit in the middle.

Kinzinger either doesn’t understand that a “compromise” will lead to further deterioration of the health care system, or he’s fully aware of such an outcome but he wants to appeal to a broad base of voters because he’s up for re-election in 2018.