Vice President-elect Mike Pence pontificates

“The American people want us to start over,” Pence said. “Releasing the power of the free market is the pathway toward expanding access and affordability of health care across the country.”  

This is one of the dumbest f*ckin’ things any national politician has said of late, and that’s a startlingly low standard. First of all, it was not “the American people” as such, but those who voted Republican, and they are not a majority of the American people. Second, you’d have to be the dullest tool in the shed (or succumb to wishful thinking, self-deception, or a state of denial) to think a regressive return to “the power of the free market” is going to be the panacea to our health care system, as Vice President-elect Pence claims. Such a claim is dangerous ideological claptrap that, to the extent it proves capable of motivating policy changes, will be responsible for endangering the health and lives of countless people in this country, apart from its evisceration of any tangible conception of and movement toward “health justice.” 

Recent relevant links courtesy of the Los Angeles Times: 
“Republicans offer no plan to repeal Obamacare as more party members express concern.”
“Republicans call Obamacare a ‘failure.’ These 7 charts show they couldn’t be more wrong.”