If this summer doesn’t make you even remotely interested in the future of the United States, I don’t know what will. What we have right now, during July of 2017, is a GOP that is caught in the trap of socialized health care: the crucial decision regarding what to do with the Affordable Care Act (aka, Obamacare) signed into place by former president Barack Obama.

From the very beginning of his notorious campaign and current first year in office, President Donald Trump’s claimed one of his first acts in office would be to repeal and replace Obamacare. The GOP largely supported this endeavor since the ramifications of socialized healthcare in a capitalist, market-based economy were largely ignored during Obamacare’s inception and are now manifesting as skyrocketing premiums and lack of sufficient coverage. The principles of Obamacare are so socialist in nature that we need to examine if Obamacare is even worth replacing. We have made some progress so far, since as of Tuesday, July 25 2017, the senate did move to debate on the GOP healthcare reform (some more reluctantly than others) yet this does not mean we can rest easily and needn’t worry about a bailout, for three very specific reasons.

First, it is not philosophically or economically feasible for the government (Right or Left) to provide high-quality healthcare, especially to a country as large as the United States. Obamacare is not philosophically feasible because to assume a government monopoly on health insurance implies that the government knows what is best for everyone’s body and everyone’s health (ironically the last time I checked the right to do whatever one wanted with their own body was one of the golden rules of Leftism). Allowing a socialized, federally-funded healthcare system for which you must have coverage or be penalized sends the message that the government is better at making choices related to your own health and body than you are as an individual who possesses that body.

The reason it is not economically feasible is because the consumer has virtually no control over his or her costs and services when the government acts as a middleman between what would be an economically-stimulating voluntary transaction between the provider and consumer of health insurance. Instead with Obamacare the government has decided to obstruct the transaction and filter it the way it sees fit, all the while violating the constitution by surpassing Article I, section 9, clause 7 calling for Congressional approval of appropriated funds and requiring accountability for use of said appropriated federal funds.

Secondly, we do need to remember that many people do depend on Obamacare. The large assumption is that regardless of the outcome of GOP healthcare, we cannot simply strip people of their coverage, especially when their lives depend on it. However, we most certainly can because Obamacare is both unconstitutional in nature and well-decorated theft. Unfortunately, the costs for those dependent on Obamacare aren’t determined by the quality of service or willingness to provide said service, it’s determined entirely by one’s economic class (i.e., forced discrimination), therefore the Left’s defense of Obamacare is that opposing Obamacare is equivalent to hating the poor. Obamacare supporters have taken advantage of this golden opportunity time and time again, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who claimed that, “…Anyone who voted to move to proceed and certainly anyone who votes to send this bill to conference is virtually, certainly, voting to kick millions off health care, to make it much harder to get coverage if you have a pre-existing condition, to slash Medicaid and give a huge amount of tax cuts to the rich.” Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is another who shoots from the hip with the ad hominem arguments, claiming that the move to debate was the “cruelest, most destructive and irresponsible piece of legislation ever brought to the United States Senate in the modern history of this country.” If we take Obamacare away, we are just being really, really mean bigoted people who hate the poor, right? Hardly. Dismantling Obamacare, preventing bailout, and putting a consumer-based insurance market in place whereby individuals could choose their insurance based on coverage and cost? Now that could work in a market-based economy like the United States.

Lastly, let’s acknowledge that regardless of the outcome, the GOP will likely be experiencing some form of political suicide for a time by even attempting to change Obamacare. For one, the ad hominem arguments against anyone who opposes socialized medicine can be crippling to one’s reputation, and applying this to one of two majority parties in the United States has potentially drastic ramifications. The Left has already begun to try and absolve their own responsibility in the disaster that is Obamacare by pointing the blame at the Right by declaring that, in their attempts to dismantle the legislation, the Right is behaving even worse than the Left did back in 2009 and 2010. They substantiate this by using statistics showing that the GOP is polling even worse than Obamacare did back at its inception, implying that somehow popular opinion holds validity and not taking into account the countless variables that could explain such statistics, such as favor toward Donald Trump or distrust of government intervention in healthcare. Merely stating that because Obamacare was ‘less popular’ back when it was being debated is an appeal to majority fallacy, tossed in with so much arrogance and condescension that there were no attempts at disguise.

So, Obamacare: is it even worth replacing, as President Donald Trump has been promising? It would seem to not be the case, since the system itself is not welcome via the Constitution, it is economically unsustainable, it creates a space for politically correct banter while jamming the free market process, and as such tackling it is a form of potential career and political suicide. As a whole, we simply need to stay vigilant and recognize that, no matter how many times a non sequitur is invoked to evade the disastrous outcome of Obamacare, no piece of legislation is worth organizing theft and no piece of legislation is worth violating the Constitution. The GOP has taken on a behemoth and terrifying task, one by which could be utterly victorious (a complete dismantling of Obamacare) or utterly disastrous (a full-scale government bailout). Let’s continue to support those who are looking to reignite the consumer market within health insurance, let’s continue to push for repeal over replace, and let’s continue to watch as the fate of socialized healthcare gets put on trial.