U.N. Claims Repealing Obamacare Violates International Law Or Something

From the same body that has just placed Saudi Arabia on the Women’s Rights Council, and has featured numerous human rights offenders on the Human Rights Council. The same body that has consistently excused the terrorism from Palestinians against Israel, and typically takes the side of hardcore Islamist regimes, such as Iran over Israel. Which constantly has scandals where their peacekeepers are raping women and children. Which wants to make blasphemy against Islam an international crime. Which sees aid money go to dictators rather than citizens. Which wants to restrict inexpensive, easy to obtain energy sources from usage by people in poverty. Dana Milbank, in his opinion piece, forgets to mention things like that

Apparently repealing Obamacare could violate international law

We’ve already seen that repealing Obamacare is politically perilous. Now there’s a new complication: It may also violate international law.

The United Nations has contacted the Trump administration as part of an investigation into whether repealing the Affordable Care Act without an adequate substitute for the millions who would lose health coverage would be a violation of several international conventions that bind the United States. It turns out that the notion that “health care is a right” is more than just a Democratic talking point.

A confidential, five-page “urgent appeal” from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva, sent to the Trump administration, cautions that the repeal of the Affordable Care Act could put the United States at odds with its international obligations. The Feb. 2 memo, which I obtained Tuesday, was sent to the State Department and expresses “serious concern” about the prospective loss of health coverage for almost 30 million people, which could violate “the right to social security of the people in the United States.”

If healthcare is such a right, why is the UN not demanding that Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Islamic nations that run on Islamic law, stop whipping and hanging gays and women who have been raped?

None of this, of course, will deter President Trump and congressional Republicans, who are again attempting to get a repeal bill through the House. They scoff at lectures from U.N. bureaucrats, particularly on domestic affairs, and the world body has no practical way to impose its will on Congress. There’s also a logical question: If repealing Obamacare violates international law, wasn’t the country in violation before Obamacare? Puras addresses this by writing that the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights “notes that there is a strong presumption that retrogressive measures taken in relation to the right to health are not permissible.”

Of course, most elected Republicans, elected since 2010 on a platform to repeal Ocare, and since 2014 on replacing it with ideas that increase access, reduce costs, and get the government out of our health decisions, are being their usual squishy, idiot selves. They said “give us the House, and we’ll tank this bill.” Then “well, we need the Senate to Do This.” Then “oh, well, we also need the White House.” They’ve had years to craft a good plan, and there are plans out there. The GOP elected leaders have just chosen not to use the ones that would work.

As for the United Nations, they can go pound sand. We should stop providing funds for a body that consistently violates its own mores and rules on human rights.