Leave Healthcare Law in Place
What
a state we’re in as a country right now over the healthcare law. By
now, it has to be clear to anyone observing American politics that
Republican leaders want the Supreme Court to hand them a political
victory, and that they have no plans to replace the healthcare law with
anything if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act. They
have distorted our pre-healthcare law medical history to the point where
they act as if the healthcare system were perfect before President
Obama and the Democrats destroyed it.
It
is time for a reality check here. Our media is finally starting to
report what would happen if the Supreme Court overturns the healthcare
law.
First, let’s talk about what U.S. News and World Report said in an article aptly titled, “What would happen if Obama’s Health Care Law were repealed?” “The
Supreme Court deliberations will focus narrowly on whether Congress has
the constitutional authority to require such a thing. But lost in the
lofty rhetoric will be the scale of the original problem, which finally
affected so many Americans that Obama was able to overcome decades of
opposition and pass the most sweeping changes in the healthcare system
since Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965.” It states that 16%
of our population does not even have health insurance, how medical costs
ruin lives, how people die because they have no insurance, and how
expensive it is for individuals and companies. These same points are
being made everywhere. And here’s an extra nugget of information—over
half of all personal bankruptcies are due to medical costs, and most of
those people had insurance. That’s why we passed healthcare reform in
the first place—to tackle some of these issues after years of political
inertia and the resulting medical care system that was starting to
collapse under the weight of these problems.
In the Washington Post,
Sarah Klift wrote an article, “Analyst: Health reform law repeal a
net-negative for hospitals.” She said Moody’s wrote a report stating
that if the Supreme Court overturned the healthcare law, it would be a
disaster for for-profit hospitals. Klift reminds us that “before
healthcare reform passed, hospitals were in a financial squeeze.” She
quotes Moody’s report about what would happen: “If the law is fully or
partially repealed, for-profit hospital operators’ costs of treating
patients who can’t pay their bills would rise. That’s because the
population of uninsured individuals would remain large and patients
would continue to be responsible for an ever larger portion of the cost
of care.”
Republican
leaders and their allies complain that under the new healthcare law,
family health insurance premiums will go up. The truth is that they were
going up before the law was enacted. David Cutler of the Center for
American Progress reports in his article called “Repealing Health Care
is a job-killer,” that family health insurance premiums jumped 80% in
ten years after adjusting for inflation. He also points out that median
income fell 5% during that time. He said that repealing this law would
“destroy 250,000-400,000 jobs annually over the next
decade.” Republican and their allies claim the opposite. They claim
that this country will lose jobs. Who is telling the truth?
Factcheck.org
looked at these claims. In their summary, “A job-killing law?,” they
look at the “evidence” the GOP offers. The GOP cites a study by the
National Federation of Independent Business. This study projects a 1.6
million job loss, and Republican politicians toss that number around in
every speech they make against the healthcare law. There’s just one
little problem—as Factcheck.org states, “the NFIB did not study the new
law. Its report was based on a hypothetical employer mandate that bears
little resemblance to what was actually passed…” Apparently, that
report they cite actually projected a job gain. And one more
problem. The GOP report claims that the NFIB analysis is
“independent.” How independent can the NFIB be when, as Factcheck.org
helpfully reports, they co-sponsored an ad with the Chamber of Commerce
attacking healthcare legislation? They also are against any rule
requiring business to offer health insurance.
Republican
leaders offer the usual stone soup of healthcare “reforms and
improvements,” but consumers should beware. None of these so-called
reforms and improvements have ever been put into effect, even when
Republicans had the White House, the Senate, and the House. Something
had to be done. We now have a law and it’s working. Let’s hope the
Supreme Court leaves it alone.
