Obamacare repeal fails on two big fronts
Fewer Americans will have health insurance if the Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act is enacted.
That’s the crucial takeaway from the American Health Care Act, because it goes to the heart of the health and financial stability of everyday Americans.
The consensus from analysts from both sides of the political divide is 10 million or more people will lose coverage under the plan, reversing a trend from the past few years that saw the nation reach its lowest uninsured rate ever.
While health insurance is not a panacea, it provides a firm foundation for the needy. An uninsured person is more likely to experience higher rates of personal bankruptcy. A lower coverage rate also could mean more people suffering from otherwise preventable causes. The Affordable Care Act, which extended coverage to an additional 24 million people, saved tens of thousands of lives every year. That progress would be jeopardized.
The replacement of the individual mandate with a 30 percent surcharge on premiums for a year for those who go without insurance for two months may also scare off people who need the insurance.
Don’t be fooled by Republican claims that “access to health insurance” is akin to having actual health care coverage. Every American also has access to a BMW dealership – but only a relative handful can afford to buy a new expensive luxury car. That kind of thinking, though, seems to undergird the GOP plan, as evidenced by Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who suggested poor people could afford insurance if they just skipped their next iPhone purchase.
The American Health Care Act would make life easier for the healthy and wealthy and harder for the sick and poor.
Premiums and deductibles are expected to increase. The richest Americans would receive millions of dollars in tax breaks as subsidies for the poor are pared back. Corporate executives would receive increased pay with the removal of a cap on deductions.
The ACA helped extend the life of Medicare by roughly a dozen years while helping millions of senior citizens pay for prescription drugs. The GOP alternative may end up shortening the life of Medicare by half a decade or so. Planned Parenthood funding is on the chopping block, and the Medicaid expansion will be phased out.
One of more astounding developments is that the party that lamented that Democrats “crammed” the ACA through the legislative process – even though it included several months of public debate and hearings – plans to begin voting on the replacement before Congress’s official scorekeeper can tell us what it will cost.
From a political point-of-view, the American Health Care Act is nonsensical in that it solves few of the problems the GOP claimed needed to be urgently addressed. More importantly, from a humanitarian standpoint, the proposal falls well short of President Donald Trump’s promise to “cover everyone,” and it unnecessarily endangers lives.
This story was originally published March 7, 2017 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Obamacare repeal fails on two big fronts."