This week, the Republican Party's seven-year attempt to dismantle the Affordable Care Act kicked the bucket.

After three Republican senators, all women, withheld their votes.

One of them, Shelley Moore Caputo, West Virginia said, quote,

I didn't come to Washington to hurt people.

So Donald Trump declared that he would, quote, let Obamacare fail,

and in fact he has plenty of options for moving that failure along. He could refuse to reimburse

insurance companies for reducing low-income customers out-of-pocket costs. He could stop

enforcing the mandate that most Americans have health coverage,

and he could refrain from advertising the Affordable Care Act's fall sign-up period.

All this would inevitably hit poor people the hardest, a fact that does not surprise Jack Freck,

who spent 30 years serving the poor in Appalachian, Ohio,

and also was the guide for our recent series, Busted, America's Poverty Myths. Check it out.

Freck was saddened, but not surprised by the proposals put forward by the House and the Senate.

He says that such ideas are both perennial and bipartisan.

For example, the Clinton administration bundled what were once federal welfare dollars

into block grants to states where the money often is misdirected or hoarded even as it's shriveled by inflation.

I spoke to Jack Freck in March just after the House passed its replacement for Obamacare.

Basically, you know, what's happening here is the Republicans do not believe in government in general, and specifically

some of these entitlements. They generally don't believe that there is a right to health care.

That's why now they talk in terms of people having access to it. I think people are going to have

access to health care and better health care, and they're going to be empowered in their health care. I think people are going to have access to health care and better health care,

and they're going to be empowered in their health care.

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