Heller did the right thing; now it’s time for bipartisan effort

Saturday, July 22, 2017 | 2 a.m.

Sitting at Donald Trump’s right-hand side on Wednesday, Sen. Dean Heller looked about as comfortable as a man watching his teenage daughter marry Gary Busey.

How Heller allowed himself to get planted next to Trump was a head-scratcher, given that Trump’s obvious purpose in calling senators together was to trash those who opposed the Senate’s latest health care bill — a group that included Heller — and put pressure on them to vote for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Predictably, Heller took a beating, with Trump calling him out and “jokingly” suggesting he get on board with the GOP leadership.

“He wants to remain a senator, doesn’t he?” Trump said.

Heller presumably does, which is why he should shrug off Trump’s heavy handed attack, stick to his guns and oppose the repeal.

The Nevada Republican did the right thing on the health care bill, putting the interests of Nevadans over party loyalty. He and other senators who held out literally helped prevent a tragedy that would have resulted in millions of Americans losing health care coverage so that the wealthy could catch yet more tax breaks.

It was a courageous stance. Politically, the easier thing to do would have been to play along and avoid just the kind of ugly backlash that Trump inflicted on Heller.

So here’s hoping Nevadans let Heller know that while Trump was all too willing to throw Heller to the sharks, they’re standing behind him.

In the aftermath of the Senate bill’s collapse, Nevada’s congressional delegates should also know that Nevadans expect all of them to follow Heller’s lead and work toward better policy on health care.

As Trump was hanging Heller out like a pinata and pouting, saying “We’ll let Obamacare fail,” more responsible lawmakers were expressing a willingness to work across party lines to improve the ACA.

The nation’s leaders should know that Americans will demand that they do just that — and that means Democrats and Republicans.

The Democratic Party has been practically as awful as the Republicans over the last six months, offering plenty of criticism and complaining that Republicans were shutting them out of the discussion. The problem was that while the party has drafted a health care policy and various Democrat congressional members have come up with variations of it, Democrats have preferred to trash the Republican plans over educating Americans about their policies and building support for them.

Enough. If the last six months have shown us anything, it’s that there isn’t sufficient political will to demolish Obamacare. Given that reality, and the fact that the ACA needs fixes, Americans won’t stand for anything less than a bipartisan approach on the issue.

Both sides need to give. For instance, Republicans need to dump the repeal effort and embrace Medicaid expansion, which would reduce uncertainty that has caused insurers to withdraw from some marketplaces, while Democrats need to welcome tweaks on the employer mandate and the so-called “Cadillac tax,” which applies to high-cost employer-sponsored and multi-employer health plans.

That’s just a start. As Trump so thick-headedly discovered after taking office, health care policy is complex.

But repealing the ACA certainly isn’t the answer, nor is putting millions of Americans at risk by “letting it die,” which is code for sabotaging it.

If Trump could quit throwing tantrums long enough, he might realize that Heller and the other holdouts have given him the opportunity to get the political win he’s so desperately craving. That would involve working with Democrats to fix Obamacare, a triumph for which he could take credit. Americans don’t care whose name is on it as long as it works.