The fight over repealing Obamacare exposes the growing infighting in the ruling class. Different factions are building political movements as they vie for power they try to leverage their movement against opposing groups of capitalists. The Tea party capitalists led by the Koch Brothers were able to mobilize the Freedom Caucus politicians to send a message that the ruling class has to take them into account.
The infighting is sharpening because the current situation of the U.S. bosses is extremely unstable and there are big fights coming as the bosses sort out their differences.
The differences that are playing out over health care range from the Freedom Caucus wanting to do away with virtually all government health care to the Bernie sanders/ Keith Ellison democrats fronting for the bosses who want to give more crumbs in the form of expanding Medicaid as big wars loom on the horizon.
The factions are somewhat fluid but here is an effort to give a description of the various factions.
The Trump faction
Trump built a political movement that got him elected, probably to his own surprise. The Trump movement has been built around racist attacks on immigrants and white nationalism. Trump was supported by the billionaire Mercer family, his own money as well as what amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars of free publicity from the Breitbart news run by White Nationalist Steve Bannon who saw Trump as a way to get into the White House, as well as the main news outlets like NBC and CNN who were encouraged by the Clinton campaign to build up Trump as the easiest opponent for Clinton.
The Main wing bosses have fought to surround Trump with their guys in the form Generals and finance people they feel are reliable. At the same time the Mercer family and Steve Bannon people are fighting for their own positions. On healthcare, like most issues the Trump faction has been schizophrenic, reflecting the infighting in its own ranks. Swinging wildly from healthcare for all to promising the Freedom caucus an end to almost all mandated care.
The Main wing
The Main capitalists, the biggest oil, finance, media and tech companies including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Apple, Google, Exxon-Mobile, the Big Three Auto makers. These are the biggest capitalists and have had the outlook of maintaining the U.S. position as the dominant capitalist power. They were the backers of the Clinton campaign and are represented by what the media refers to as the centrist politicians mainly in the Democratic Party, people such as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters and a wing of the Republican party including John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others.
This is the group that has rallied around Obamacare as a kind of half measure to try to appease the working class but not make the insurance or drug companies give up any profits.
Freedom Caucus
Backed by the Koch Brothers and the Heritage Foundation, this group has the Tea Party base and wants to do away with all mandatory requirements for insurance. In particular they have mobilized their base of small businesses owners who are pushing back against the requirement for companies with over 50 workers to offer mandatory insurance. But the bigger issue for them is to show they have some strength after Trump was able to co-op their base during the election. The fight over Obamacare was mainly an attempt to reassert themselves.
Sanders/Ellison wing of Democratic Party
Internal fight over tactics in the Democratic Party is playing out in the wake of the Republican failure on health care. Sanders/ Ellison forces who favor a more aggressive move towards state control over U.S. capitalism and have the support of younger people in the party are calling for single-payer health care and confronted Nancy Pelosi at a town hall to demand she back the demand.
This group represents the set of bosses who believe that in order for the U.S. to remain a world power major changes have to be made to win the working class to support much bigger wars. They want to tell the drug and insurance companies that they need to cut their profits to get workers on board with their plans.
What all these faction have in common is that they cynically see the working class as pawns to be manipulated and used for their purposes. Healthcare is a matter of life and death for the working class; not a carrot to be held out or taken away. This is the real sickness of capitalism.