Instead of the usual cool “no drama Obama,” our former president is fresh off having unleashed a couple of fiery speeches in Wisconsin and Michigan. Obama’s anger was on full display, and who can blame him.

One of Obama’s signature accomplishments is the Affordable Care Act, pejoratively labeled by Republicans as “Obamacare.” Congressional Republicans refused to cooperate in addressing the need for millions of Americans to gain affordable health care. They hammered Obama and Democrats for foisting on the public “socialized medicine,” and “death panels.”

For three election cycles Republicans, with the aid of the mainstream media, mercilessly hammered Democrats on the ACA. Unpopularity of Obamacare was credited for Republican victories. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius was ruthlessly pilloried over the troubled rollout of the ACA.

Republicans, including Senators Susan Collins and John McCain, voted countless times to overturn the ACA. But as long as Obama remained in the White House, the ACA was secure.

Trump promised that if he became president, he would immediately end that “disastrous legislation.” Trump won, with Republican control of both branches of congress. Republicans were ecstatic, their dream had come true. The despised, unpopular Obamacare was as good as gone.

Or, was it?

Predictably, the Republicans who had years to come up with a replacement for Obamacare had nothing.  Trump, shocked that healthcare policy is complex, had nothing. It’s easier to criticize policy legislation than to do the hard work to solve complex problems. But with their friendly president in the White House, Republicans enthusiastically introduced legislation to get rid of that “horrible bill.”

Then a funny thing happened. Well, maybe not so funny, but something that the sleepwalking mainstream media swept under the rug while Obama and the Democrats were getting beat up and losing elections over it. Surprise! Millions of people were benefitting from the basic tenets of Obamacare.

Whaddaya know! These unheralded beneficiaries of the unpopular Obamacare were there all along.

With the hated Obamacare legislation about to be repealed, and nothing to replace it, beneficiaries emerged from out of nowhere and blasted Republicans at town hall meetings. Some beneficiaries, especially those with pre-existing conditions, had received health care for the first time. Lives had been saved and bankruptcies avoided. Electronic media clones that never bothered to visit overcrowded big city emergency rooms, or give voice to beneficiaries of the act, seized upon the drama of low-income beneficiaries who, with elimination of the ACA, would lose health care. 

Key provisions of the ACA include mandatory coverage of pre-existing conditions by health insurance providers. To enable insurance companies to do this, young healthy people who think they don’t need it or don’t want it, are required to purchase insurance. 

An insurance company can pay out for a house destroyed by fire because they receive premiums from the greater number of homeowners whose houses do not catch fire. Similarly, for insurance companies to cover high costs of patients with pre-existing conditions, they need to expand their base to include premiums from those who are less likely to need coverage — at least for now. Hence, the mandatory coverage necessary to broaden the base. That’s basic economics — it’s how insurance works. Republicans who insist that they understand the private sector better than Democrats surely know this. But for this, facts don’t seem to matter. 

The unpopular mandate of universal coverage was trashed as loss of freedom and a government takeover of health care. Never mind that healthcare delivery and insurance is still mostly private sector. Again, such facts don’t seem to matter. 

Excluding the mandate that healthy people pay into the system would tank the economics of covering pre-existing conditions at affordable premiums. With the loss of that basic provision of the ACA, many would be again without affordable health care. As this, seemingly for the first time, became clear, the Republican effort to overturn the ACA failed, with Senator Collins and McCain, who previously had gone along with Republicans trashing the bill, joining the Democrats to prevent overturning it.

So, Obamacare, held to be responsible for defeating Democrats, is now favored by a majority of Americans. Nearly every citizen knows someone not under Medicare who has a pre-existing condition that, if not covered by insurance, would be financially devastating. Knowing the public support of coverage of pre-existing conditions, Republican candidates are now insisting that they favor it.

Who can blame Obama for his fury? After his self-professed shellacking over the ACA, and repeated Republican effort to kill it, Republicans now claim to be champions of covering pre-existing conditions that were a key provision of the ACA.

But again, it seems that facts don’t matter. The same Republicans, including Wisconsin’s Governor Walker who railed against the ACA, now claim to support coverage of pre-existing conditions. This, while Walker is leading a coalition of Republican-led states in an effort to declare the ACA unconstitutional. The states are arguing that the individual mandate requiring Americans to have health insurance is unconstitutional, invalidating the entire ACA.

How about facts regarding America’s political divide?

During his campaign, a Republican congressman from Montana tackled an inquisitive reporter, slamming him to the floor and breaking his glasses. During a recent rally in Montana, to cheers of his supporters, Trump celebrated this act of physical violence. This is consistent with Trump urging his fans to punch out dissenters at his rallies.

Let’s spare the false equivalence “that they all do it.” No, they don’t. It is not Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, or any other Democratic politician that is physically roughing up reporters and urging their supporters to punch out dissenters at their rallies. It is President Trump, not Democratic politicians, who is explicitly championing physical violence in politics.

That is fact, but do facts matter? Sure, eventually. But in the short run, they are too often papered over and lost in the babble, including false equivalence reporting.

— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.