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With this week’s vote to repeal President Obama’s health care reform, House Republicans struck a blow for freedom.

They struck a blow for the freedom of hospitals to avoid financial penalties, no matter how many Medicare patients develop infections under their care. They struck a blow for the freedom of hospitals to avoid consequences, no matter how many Medicare patients are readmitted soon after treatment. And they struck a blow for the freedom of health care providers to receive unending annual increases in their Medicare reimbursements, even if they fail to improve their productivity by even a fraction of what’s occurring in other industries.

Take that, Big Government.

Coming from me or Jon Chait, this wouldn’t be worth a second glance. But it’s from longtime center-left political columnist Ronald Brownstein, who doesn’t normally engage in quite such obvious snark. It’s a sign that healthcare reform really is here to stay and mainstream Washington is already tiring of Republican game playing about repeal. It’s also, I think, a sign that if Republicans really do try to shut down the government come March, they’re not going to have much of anyone besides Fox News on their side.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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