Story highlights Jonathan Tasini: After callous vote, people will organize to demand health care as a right

Fight for single-payer system would distinguish Democrats from GOP, he says

Jonathan Tasini (@jonathantasini) is the author of "The Essential Bernie Sanders and His Vision for America," president of the Economic Future Group and the host of the "Working Life" podcast. His book "Resist and Rebel: The Peoples' Uprising in America" will be published in the fall. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) Democrats are denouncing Thursday's House vote to repeal Obamacare as a huge step backward. As Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi put it on Twitter and reiterated in remarks on the House floor, "Every Republican who votes for #Trumpcare will have it tattooed on their forehead. They will be held accountable."

Jonathan Tasini

The best way to hold them accountable, though, instead of decrying the passage of this bill -- which has almost no chance of passing the Senate into law -- is for Democrats to see it as an opportunity. Rather than try to defend a flawed program such as Obamacare, they should crusade for health care as a basic human right. And there's a simple way to make that happen -- institute "Medicare for all."

Republicans will never go for it, but there is no better banner to carry forward as the party works to build support for a Democratic takeover of Congress in 2018.

The repeal of the Affordable Care Act squeaked through the House, but Republican leaders forced a bad vote on many of its caucus members. The bill is dead on arrival in the Senate because every week since the election, the ACA has become more popular among people, particularly those with existing illnesses who, no matter what their political affiliation, feared being left with no insurance. The pittance thrown into the repeal to pay for high-risk pools won't do much . The end result: Millions of people will now lose insurance, as the Congressional Budget Office found in an earlier version of the bill, and, thus, Americans will be sicker -- and many will die.

There is plenty of competition for the award for "Dumbest Policy Debate," but the fight over health care has got to rank close to the top. If politicians of both parties could put ideology aside and choose smart, moral economics, they would embrace the only sane solution: a single-payer system. If we can shift the debate, admittedly a huge hurdle, there is a simple solution that could be done virtually overnight: Establish a single-payer system by just removing Medicare's age requirement.

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