The House of Representatives voted this afternoon on the American Health Care Act, a Republican bill designed to make health care worse and give hard-right conservatives the chance to claim they “repealed Obamacare.” (Some fun changes: Under Trumpcare — as it has currently been amended — rape, postpartum depression, Cesarean sections, and experience with domestic violence are all considered preexisting conditions. Having any of these conditions would mean an increase in patient premiums, which could price many people out of receiving care. Medicaid would also see significant cuts.) The vote was a close one, with several key representatives seemingly on the fence about their votes; one representative who was not, however, on the fence about his AHCA vote is John Faso, a congressman from the 19th district of New York. Faso tweeted earlier today that after “careful review,” he’d be voting yes.
Congressman Faso has 2,617 Twitter followers. As of publishing this post, more than 3,000 people had tweeted replies to Faso condemning his support and urging him to change his stance.
“The Ratio,” on Twitter, is the balance of reply tweets to follower count (or, more complicatedly, the balance between followers, replies, likes, and retweets). If your tweet has a lot of likes, but not many retweets, it means that people agree, but are afraid to say so. If it has a lot of replies, but not many retweets or likes, that means lots of people disagree, and are yelling at you about it. More replies than followers, retweets, and likes is a pretty good indicator that ya done messed up. (Esquire described “The Ratio” as “how to know if you’ve sent a horrible tweet,” earlier this spring.)
It’s worth noting that a number of the newly defined preexisting conditions — sexual assault, postpartum depression, and Cesarean sections — apply predominantly to people who identify as women. Which Faso, to my knowledge, does not. (Happy to hear the legislation feels good to you though, bud.) Still, if you can get past the hundreds of tweets from people begging Faso to vote no as a matter of life and death, some of the responses are pretty good.
