Exactly.
Republicans have attacked the individual mandate for years, but the individual mandate was never what they were really mad about.
Their real target is the law's Medicare taxes and investment taxes, which are much bigger and mostly fall on the top 0.1%.
That is why even after Republicans got rid of the individual mandate in 2017 — the thing they said they hated about the law — they STILL filed that bogus lawsuit to overturn the whole thing, including pre-existing conditions, which they claim they actually support.
Because in order to protect pre-existing conditions, you have to pay low- and middle-income people money to buy health insurance. A lot of money. Those subsidies on the health exchanges are big. Medicaid expansion is big.
And the ACA raises that money by taxing the GOP's donors.
This is why Republicans can't be honest about their health plan.
Their plan is cutting all the taxes on the rich that fund the ACA. And though many of them would genuinely like to keep pre-existing conditions covered, they don't want the taxes on the rich that make it possible.
That is literally all this has been, all along. All their attempts to kill the ACA. It's never been about choice. It's never been about death panels or mandates.
It's always been about repealing a big tax increase on the rich. That's it. That's the game.
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