The Obligation To Preserve Health Care
D. S. Mitchell
The Trump administration seems bent on destroying health care in America. Despite promises to “guarantee health care for all” while on the campaign trail, Trump has moved back to the GOP corner, now calling for Repeal and Destroy.
Open enrollment for the ACA (ObamaCare) starts on November 1st and extends through December 15, 2017 for health care policies starting January 1, 2018. I would wager that a large part of Americans are unaware of these important approaching dates.
Why wouldn’t they know? The problem comes from the Trump administration’s dramatic cut backs on efforts to tell people about deadlines and other matters related to the ACA. The strategy is to openly sabotage the national health care system. Americans should be given time to check their current coverage and make health care decisions to avoid being trapped in a policy they don’t like, or in a policy that no longer fits their needs.
Not if Trump and his cohorts have their way. The White House has cut billions in funds to subsidize insurance policies for Americans covered by the ACA, by executive order. President Trump has dramatically and erroneously claimed that the subsidies are forcing taxpayers to “subsidize the insurance companies,” and he “will not allow” the insurance companies to continue to make carloads of money at taxpayer expense.
What? Now, I have heard it all. The insurance companies need payment subsidies to insure poor and middle class Americans. That is most of us, in one form or another, such as Medicaid for a child born with cystic fibrosis, or a grandmother in a nursing home, or a young mother diagnosed with breast cancer, or a hip replacement for elderly Uncle Charlie. Whether we think about it or not, ACA is helping either a relative, a neighbor, an employee, or a friend of a friend. We do not live isolated lives and we all know someone impacted by the ACA, unless you are part of the 1%.
Trump has not given one thought to the needs of the American people, especially anyone that isn’t in the 1% fraternity. The Art of the Deal, is really the Art of the Con. It’s ordinary Americans that are left in limbo, watching a voodoo dance by the Trump administration and the GOP after their first efforts to Repeal ObamaCare were defeated by protesters and grass-roots activism across the country. After that very visible failure they decided to strangle the system, and beat it to death by executive order.
Trump’s elimination of subsidies–as well as causing insurance companies to raise premiums in anticipation of the act–will end up costing the U.S. Treasury even more than if nothing had been done. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office forecasts that ending cost-sharing reductions will increase the federal deficit by $194 billion over the next ten years.
The disorganized and seemingly haphazard way this dismantling of the American health care system is taking place has left many in the public filled with stress and confusion, and terrified doctors, hospitals and insurers.
Last week US Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) proposed a two-year extension of subsidies to stabilize the insurance marketplace. A temporary bi-partisan agreement sounds like a good thing, but Trump has dismissed the effort and has declared he is not supporting the action.
The uncertainty in the market, created by the president’s executive order to cease insurance company subsidies has created new anxiety and uncertainties. The culmination of the uncertainty has created a level of angst I have not seen before.
We all know that the ACA is not perfect. But, in general, as the public has become more familiar with the program its popularity has steadily been growing; to the extent that passing of a Repeal bill in the congress has become nearly impossible. So, the Trump administration decided it would rather dismantle and destroy, without thought of the results. Did anyone in the White House give five minutes of thought to what is best for the millions of Americans who depend on the ACA system?
We are talking about one sixth of the US economy, one on which we rely on for essential services. I live in a rural area, and my local hospital and their individual medical providers-depend on predictable payments by private and public insurers. Medicare and Medicaid payments have slowed and declined in the last decade.
The intentional and calculated chaos created by Trump and the GOP against the system, is now undermining the private leg of the health care system, and it is becoming increasingly unstable. Each of us face a high price for incompetent national policy management of health care. This is a life and death business.
Our lawmakers have an obligation to put a stop to Trump’s assault on our health care and make sure that American citizens have a stable and predictable health care system that is there when any, or all of us, need it. Call or tweet your lawmaker and support ACA subsidy payments.
Join the Resistance
Dar
