Answering Kennedy’s Call
Healthcare is back in the news, and Republicans still don’t get its importance as an election issue in its continuing efforts to repeal Obamacare, the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), enacted that I wrote about in 2017 in the Huffington Post.
The Republican Party is now Trump’s party, and nothing has changed. Trump’s failed effort in 2017 to repeal the health-care law was blasted at the time over the prospect of millions of Americans losing their health insurance. Senator John McCain killed Republican’s last attempt in 2017 when I first wrote about it.
“Americans have just avoided another health care disaster in voting down the Senate’s ‘skinny’ Obamacare Repeal and Replace bill,” I said then. “Even though maintaining most of the taxes to pay for the Medicaid portion, it would have made insurance coverage prohibitively expensive for those older and sicker users with the removal of the private and employer mandate requirements that would cause younger and healthier people to leave the insurance markets.”
“Republicans' Obamacare repeal bill would leave 17 million more people uninsured next year, and 32 million more in 2026, the Congressional Budget Office said in a 2017 estimate. Premiums would double by 2026…By 2026, three quarters of the population would live in areas with no insurers participating in the non-group market, due to upward pressure on premiums and downward pressure on enrollment, the report found.”
This is even “Although overshadowed in the national political discourse by discussions about the importance of the economy, immigration, or abortion, voters have expressed that health care continues to be one of their highest priorities,” said a recent Brookings commentary.
“In fact, a May 2024 poll by Pew found that health care was the third-highest issue priority for voters, garnering a robust 57% from respondents”, continued Brookings.
Yet former President Donald Trump on the 2024 campaign trail said once again that he is “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act if he returns to the White House, reports the NYTimes, “reigniting his longstanding crusade against former President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law.”
Then why do Republicans continue to attack Obamacare when it is so popular? It’s total self-interest, the hubris of the entitled, now in stark relief. Republicans have opposed almost any government-run social welfare legislation. Remember Bush II’s attempts to privatize social security, which would have raised its cost astronomically and given his Wall Street backers a multi-billion-dollar windfall?
This first became evident in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 original campaign slogan, “government is the problem”, which was a ploy to divert at least $1 trillion from wage earners to the holders of capital by busting the labor unions and cutting taxes for the wealthiest. It was the start of a new Gilded Age that created great wealth for the top 10 percent and the great inequality we have today.
America now has the worst income inequality in the developed world, according to the CIA World Factbook. And studies have shown that those countries with the most inequality also rank lowest in healthcare benefits.
The U.S. was in 106th place of the 149 countries in income inequality as ranked by the CIA’s World Factbook; with a Gini inequality index of developing countries like Peru and Cameroon in 2017. Whereas Finland and the Scandinavian countries are at the top of equality rankings, Germany and France are 12th and 20th, respectively, as I’ve highlighted in past columns. The higher the index, the greater the gap between wealthy and poorer citizens of a country’s population.
Another June 2024 Hart Research And Protect Our Care Poll cited by Protect Our Care, a social welfare nonprofit, found that over 60 percent of voters view Obamacare favorably.
Its many features include pre-existing condition coverage and no-cost preventive care, as well as allowing young adults on parents’ insurance. There is also broad support (82% favor, 47% strongly favor) for permanently lowering the cost of premiums for people who buy insurance through the ACA.
A recent NY Times article reported that more than 45 million people are enrolled in Affordable Care Act-related coverage, according to a recent report from the Department of Health and Human Services. A record number of people — more than 20 million — have signed up for plans on the act’s marketplaces this year, according to the Biden administration.”
What would happen if Republicans return Donald Trump to power? Americans already have the worst health outcomes in the developed world, precisely because America is the only developed country—in fact, even of undeveloped countries—that doesn’t have universal coverage.
The result is one of the highest birth death rates, as well as diabetes, heart and other infectious disease rates—which are diseases usually associated with poorer, undeveloped countries and regions.
On the other hand, a 2016 Commonwealth Club study lists Obamacare’s benefits:
“…evidence indicates that the ACA has likely acted as an economic stimulus, in part by freeing up private and public resources for investment in jobs and production capacity. Moreover, the law’s payment and other cost-related reforms appear to have contributed to the marked slowdown in health spending growth seen in recent years.”
The accrued savings in health care spending relative to their projected growth prior to the ACA are substantial: Medicare alone is now projected to spend $1 trillion less between 2010 and 2020.
The lobbies behind the Obamacare repeal effort have succeeded in making more Americans ill. I don’t even want to imagine what percentage of the 32 million would ultimately lose their coverage, if Trump keeps his promise to repeal Obamacare.
Senator McCain said back then that now is the time for Republicans and Democrats to work together in “regular order” to craft something better, maybe a universal healthcare bill that insures all Americans?
That would truly make Americans healthier.
Harlan Green © 2024
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
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