Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime. Steal the man’s pole, beat him senseless, and take all the fish … Hey, you’re a modern conservative! How do Trump-brand Republicans know when they’ve settled on the right formula? When it hurts the most people.

A percentage of the 20 million Americans who gained insurance under the A.C.A. will very likely lose it if the law is repealed. Even with the provisions in the proposed American Health Care Act, the “replace” part of the Republican approach, an estimated 10 million people would fall off the rolls.

Some of them will be glad to be free of the law’s yoke; many others, probably a vast majority, will be terrified by the idea of living without health insurance. As was the case before the passage of the A.C.A., many of the uninsured — the terrified and relieved alike — will end up using hospital emergency rooms for their health care needs, even if they can’t afford it. And when they use those emergency room services, everyone ends up sinking under the weight of astoundingly high costs for uninsured patients.

But drowning people in debt is okay. It’s making sure the government doesn’t do anything helpful that’s important.

Conservatives. Bastards. My dad was a conservative, but he wouldn’t have been welcome in this republican party.