I guess the One Percenters and their minions have much to laugh about. Their plan to destroy Obama’s legacy by dismantling the ACA seems to be finally coming together.
Three years ago, we [Support the Dream Defenders] launched an FOIA Campaign designed to do two things: Force Republican Governors to admit to their culpability in the preventable deaths of thousands of people per year and 2. To hopefully shame them into doing the right thing by their constituents. Our mission then was summarized in this quote:
The way we see it, this is a win-win. If the governor refuses to comply, it's a story. Why are you not tracking the number of people you've killed? If they comply, it's a story. That story, whichever it turns out to be, will be sent to every major newspaper in that state and Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton and the AP and Al Jazeera.
Our attempt to hold the governors accountable for their gross dereliction of duty confirmed for us what we’d always suspected: Republicans have lost their collective conscience. They have lost the ability to feel shame...or empathy. Republican Governors actually boasted about their refusal to accept the Medicaid Expansion Program and showed absolutely no regard for those who suffered as a direct result of their callousness. Given all of the above, are we to act as if we are shocked that those operating under the GOP umbrella would produce a health insurance replacement plan that would deny coverage to those who need it most, increase premiums, penalize the elderly and the poor, penalize pregnant women, and further enrich the “haves”?
Everything we have learned about TrumpCare suggests that this “most beautiful, wonderful plan” was designed by rich people for rich people and that it will unleash a world o’ hurt on a wide swath of Americans. This is what we already know:
“Between 6 million and 10 million people would lose health insurance coverage if a Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act becomes law, a new report estimates.”
The elderly are in for a very rough time:
Under the ACA, insurance companies can charge their oldest customers prices three times those of younger customers, but under this plan, insurance companies would be allowed to charge elderly Americans up to five times more than young people.
As a result, annual premiums would rise 22 percent for people between the ages 60 to 64 and people in their 50s would see a 13 percent in annual premiums, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute.
Paul Krugman argues that even though tRumpCare retains some of the popular features of the ACA, it is not ObamaCare 2.0 as some have grandiosely claimed, but something much less attractive.
But a better designation would be ObamaCare 0.5, because it’s really about replacing relatively solid pillars with half-measures, severely and probably fatally weakening the whole structure.
That's the “ wonderful new healthcare bill” Trump boasted about. A plan that has already been rejected by a significant percentage of House Republicans, by Democrats, by the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the powerful AARP to name a few.
There’s so much wrong going on in high places that I can easily forgive the media for failing to report on Donald Trump’s most despicable threat to make poor people suffer if his will is thwarted. What sort of sick, twisted mind would even think of using the deaths, bankruptcies, pain, and suffering of millions of people as a bargaining chip?
A White House official said Trump made it clear that “this is the chance to repeal and replace,” but Politico and CNN reported that he also brought up his fallback plan: Let Obamacare fail on its own, blame the Democrats, and push another Republican health-care plan two years from now.
It should be noted that Republicans have not been disinterested bystanders merely watching as the ACA fails as tRump suggested. In fact, the GOP diligently and treacherously worked to sabotage the Act from day one. Lest we forget, Republican Governors with the full support of their comrades on Capitol Hill refused to accept the Medicaid Expansion Program, refused to set up their own state exchanges, and that’s just for starters. Republican Senator Marco Rubio played a key role in destabilizing the ACA.
By slipping a provision into the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2015. Rubio added the provision, which limits the federal government’s ability to cover expense overages for insurance companies during the initial rollout of the ACA, into the appropriations bill in 2013. It was accepted into law in December 2014 and intended to fund the government through September 2015. Because it was snuck in, no one could really anticipate how destabilizing the law would be until the end of 2015, when insurers began reporting on projected and actual losses for the year. In effect, any insurer, whether privately owned or part of a cooperative, will receive significantly reduced federal assistance to cover expenses during the first few years of insuring new policyholders through state exchanges.
And that brings us to where we are today and what we are going to do about saving and improving on the ACA. The idea of getting rid of ObamaCare and replacing it with a crappy, inferior plan sent Paul Ryan and his co-conspirators into paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter. Screwing over the poor, the elderly, the sick is so damn funny, isn’t it? Destroying the legacy of the black man who had the audacity to get himself elected to the highest office in the land is even funnier. But I have a feeling that Ryan and his gang of Deplorables may have laughed first, but we the people will deny them the opportunity to get the last laugh.
#Resist!
- Call your member of Congress at (202) 224-3121 or visit a local district office and demand Republicans show us their health care bill.
- Starting Wednesday, follow @CAPAction as we hold members accountable for putting forward policies that directly hurt their constituents.
- Share your story! Are you one of the millions who would be impacted by repeal of the Affordable Care Act? Share your story at ACAWorks.org.
- Go to ResistanceNearMe.org to find an event near you to protest the GOP’s repeal bill.