Why Avoid Discussing Health Care?
I've noticed that our resident Trump fans seem rather afraid to initiate a topic on the so-called health care bill that the Senate is expected to pass this week, despite the fact that it's likely to wind up being one of the most impactful pieces of legislation that gets enacted under Donald Trump. Why? Could it be because the so-called "Better Care Reconciliation Act" is not actually a health care bill, but rather the single largest transfer of wealth UP the social ladder in American history? Easier to whine about "snowflakes" than to defend the needless condemnation of tens of millions of poor and working class people to sickness and early death in order to fund a $590 million tax break for rich people?
According to the Congressional Budget Office estimate, the bill now under consideration by the Senate will take away the health insurance coverage of 15 million people by next year, if enacted; a figure that will rise to 22 million by the year 2026. The basic method is this: the bill will slash $772 billion in Medicaid funding (i.e. a 26% cut to the program) in exchange for $590 billion in tax breaks for rich people. Notice how similar those numbers are. They show where the money will come from and where it will go to respectively: it will come from a program that funds health insurance for poor and low-income people and be delivered into the bank accounts of rich people.
The bulk of the coverage loss would occur as the result of terminating the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid coverage to working class, i.e. low-income Americans (where traditionally it had only covered the formally impoverished), which will result in a 16% drop-off in Medicaid enrollment, with 15 million losing their coverage as a result. Low-income people (i.e. people in my income category of about $30,000 a year) would be the most affected, with the share of uninsured in this income group rising from 15% to 40% over the next decade. "Substantially smaller average subsidies", coupled with skyrocketing deductibles, will do the rest of the job, the CBO report says. In other words, premiums will fall after 2020, but only because of reduced coverage and soaring deductibles that will render medical insurance either pointless or unaffordable for millions and millions. By reduced coverage I mean health insurance companies denying coverage for such things as doctor's services, inpatient and outpatient hospital care, ambulance service, prescription drug coverage, pregnancy and childbirth care and mental health and substance abuse services, if that helps clear things up and bring this issue to a human level for people.
Put in perspective: the Affordable Care Act reduced the number of uninsured Americans from 50 million to 28 million. This bill will, according to the CBO, send it back up to 49 million, essentially reversing the entire effect of the ACA. And for what? A giant tax break for rich people! Let's see you defend that.
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Originally Posted by IMPress Polly
