We had a pretty gigantic response to Sunday's post about the Republicans stabbing retired coal miners in the back over their health care. Although 10 Republicans (including Kentucky's Rand Paul, Ohio's Rob Portman and West Virginia's Shelley Moore Capito) voted with progressives like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley, Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Mazie Hirono, Al Franken, etc. to strip the provision from a must pass keep-the-government-open funding bill, enough mostly-conservative Democrats joined with Mitch McConnell and, shockingly, Pat Toomey and both Wyoming coal country senators, Mike Enzi and John Barrasso to screw the retired coal miners royally. And, predictably, not a peep (or a tweet) out of Trump for one of his core voting blocks.That bodes poorly for anyone who was counting on Trump keeping his election promises to protect Social Security, Medicare and the popular parts of Obamacare from the clutches of Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Tom Price and the other safety net shredders in the GOP.Early Monday morning a new coalition of groups, Alliance for Healthcare Security announced a seven-figure ad buy in D.C., Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Maine and Tennessee, meant to reach and influence Republicans who could face repercussions from voters in 2018 if they vote to throw the health care system into chaos. No one thinks Trump will stand by his word and protect any working families under and circumstances. The main point of the web and print ad campaign is "Repealing the Affordable Care Act without an immediate plan to replace it is a big risk-- like walking off an unfinished bridge."The plan Paul Ryan has put together with Pence and Price would unquestionably lead to healthcare chaos and threaten the health coverage of 30 million Americans as well, in the words of the caregiver coalition "to skyrocketing premiums as insurance markets across the country collapse, and could lead state and local governments to raise taxes on working families to cover the cost of cuts to the Medicaid program. The healthcare chaos and financial instability unleashed by a rush to repeal the ACA could prevent nurses, doctors and caregivers from delivering the quality care working Americans are counting on."According to Dian Palmer a nurse and the chair of the SEIU Nurse Alliance, "If Congress votes to repeal the ACA and defund the expansion of Medicaid coverage, it will put the health of millions of children, working women and men, and veterans at risk. It will mean we go back to the days before the law when people working two or three jobs could only see a doctor in the emergency room. As a nurse, I know my patients can't afford to go backward."When House republicans have passed this kind of destructive crap in the past, it was either stopped in the Senate or vetoed by President Obama. McConnell is clearly ion board with Ryan, Pence and Price to repeal Obamacare and privatize and wreck Medicare and no one trusts Trump to veto Ryan's legislation which the congressional Republicans and their media lackeys are selling as a "repeal-and-delay" strategy. Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation made the point that worries healthcare professionals across the country, that "[a]ny significant delay between repeal of the ACA and clarity over what will replace it would likely lead insurers to exit the marketplaces in droves… It would be like a game of musical chairs. When the music stops, no insurer wants to be the only one left in the market with all of the sick people." In a letter to Congress, the American Academy of Actuaries warned that repeal-and-delay could lead to major disruptions to insurance markets.”[S]ignificant market disruption could result, leading to millions of Americans losing their health insurance,” the independent, non-partisan organization wrote.The Urban Institute study we covered last week puts Ryan's plans into some perspective for Americans to consider. Here's what's at stake if Trump let's Ryan, Pence and Price get away with their plans:
• 30 million Americans would lose health coverage, more than doubling the number of uninsured Americans.• The number of uninsured children in America would more than double, leaving 4 million children uninsured.• Nearly 13 million Americans would lose Medicaid or CHIP coverage alone.• 82 percent of those who would lose coverage are in working families.• Because of the chaotic ripple effect of repealing the Affordable Care Act, an "additional 7.3 million people become uninsured because of the near collapse" of the individual insurance market.• The near "death spiral" in the individual market "is likely to occur immediately after the reconciliation bill’s provisions take effect."
Many of those most likely to suffer the most-- like the retired coal miners who the congressional Republicans just screwed-- are naive Trump voters, white working class rust-belt and Southern true believers who thought "change" meant "change for the better." And in their story on the topic Monday, the Washington Post asserted that Without Obamacare, 52 million Americans could be denied insurance. Referencing the Kaiser Foundation study, they point out that "One in four non-elderly adults have a medical condition, ranging from diabetes to pregnancy to severe obesity to arthritis, that would make them uninsurable under the health coverage rules that prevailed before the Affordable Care Act. And keep in mind, as we reported yesterday, the new chairman of the conservative New Dem Coalition in the House, Jim Himes (CT), bragged last week that if Ryan loses "30, 40, 50" Republicans reluctant to go along with this kind of ugly bloodbath, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (the New Dems) will be there to provide the votes needed to pass it, as long as they get their little piece of the pie too.
