As with their previous version, Trumpcare 2.0 aka ‘DeathCare’ contains very little that is going to benefit anyone but the very rich as well as the insurance companies. If you have any doubt about this, simply turn to ‘page 33’ of their quickly thrown together bill where you will see:
CBO Estimate of #ACHA: $3 billion in savings because earlier deaths result in fewer benefit payments.
Healthcare is a complicated condition and it is an insult to the American people when the Republicans devote so little time in the development of a healthcare bill that contains all of the nuances that can address individuals of all income brackets, especially the poor and underserved. Add to this factor that their bill lists an incredible volume of ‘pre-existing conditions’, from asthma to pregnancy, while conveniently not including some of the male-related disorders. It appears that the all-white male group has designated being ‘female’ as a pre-existing condition. Under this new so-called ‘healthcare bill’, over twenty four million people will lose their health coverage.
Every possible benefit of the ACA has been removed from this bill and instead, they elude to the fact that everyone will have ‘access’ to healthcare…..key word: ‘access’. This should be taken into the same context that we all have ‘access’ to purchasing a Ferrari, but only a small percentage of the population can afford it.
The GOP made attempts at spinning this horror of a bill, so that it appealed to their base and ‘sounded’ more attractive. In an ABC News article, they stated:
“The GOP health bill would eliminate the fines Obama’s law imposed on people who don’t buy coverage, and erase tax increases in the Affordable Care Act on higher-earning people and the health industry. It would cut the Medicaid program for low-income people and let states impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. It would transform Obama’s subsidies for millions buying insurance, now based largely on their incomes, making the funding skimpier and tying it to consumers’ ages.
“And states could get federal waivers freeing insurers from other Obama coverage requirements. With waivers, insurers could charge people with pre-existing illnesses far higher rates than healthy customers, boost prices for older people to whatever they wish, and ignore a mandate that they cover specified services like pregnancy care.”
Those on the far right, of all income brackets, are being misled by this statement. The first thing that they are omitting is the fact that turning control over to the individual states will allow the states with Republican leaders to establish their own guidelines for what is acceptable as well as reducing covering for Medicaid recipients, based on their ‘litmus tests’. Examples of these failures of the past can be exemplified in the way that the Republican states have already handled the exclusion of Medicaid adoption under ACA. They literally threw their own populations under the bus just to prove that ACA would fail. States such as Florida allowed insurance companies to increase their fees at such an exorbitant rate, that the insurers jumped them as much as 60% in a two-month period in 2015.
If you really want to dig into how the average individual in the United States would be affected by this monstrosity of a bill, you can review a Time.com article:
“The Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which narrowly passed a vote in the House today, rolls back protections for people with pre-existing conditions, which could increase health care costs for an estimated 130 million Americans.
The American Health Care Act stipulates that states can allow insurers to charge people with pre-existing conditions more for health insurance (which is banned under the ACA) if the states meet certain conditions, such as setting up high-risk insurance pools. Insurers still cannot deny people coverage outright, as was a common practice before the ACA’s passage, but they can hike up premiums to an unaffordable amount, effectively pricing people out of the market.
In fact, premiums could reach as high as $25,700 per year for people in high-risk pools, according to a report from AARP. People who receive insurance through their employer would not be affected, unless they lost their job or moved to the individual insurance market for some other reason.”
Now here is a clincher, the concept of ‘pre-existing conditions’ covers just about every minor and major illness or situation that is imaginable (except, of course, some male-related problems). From the same Time.com article they have a partial list, and if you or your family suffer from any of these conditions, you can be thrown into an ‘insurance pool’ and/or charged more, per year, for each of these situations:
· AIDS/HIV
· Alcohol or drug abuse with recent treatment
· Alzheimer’s/dementia
· Anorexia
· Arthritis
· Bulimia
· Cancer
· Cerebral palsy
· Congestive heart failure
· Coronary artery/heart disease, bypass surgery
· Crohn’s disease
· Diabetes
· Epilepsy
· Hemophilia
· Hepatitis
· Kidney disease, renal failure
· Lupus
· Mental disorders (including Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Schizophrenia)
· Multiple sclerosis
· Muscular dystrophy
· Obesity
· Organ transplant
· Paraplegia
· Paralysis
· Parkinson’s disease
· Pending surgery or hospitalization
· Pneumocystic pneumonia
· Pregnancy or expectant parent (includes men)
· Sleep apnea
· Stroke
· Transsexualism
“But Cynthia Cox, Kaiser’s associate director, notes that the above list is a conservative sampling of all of the issues and maladies that insurers could count as pre-existing conditions. “ There are plenty of other conditions, even acne or high blood pressure, that could have gotten people denied from some insurers but accepted and charged a higher premium by other insurers” says Cox. Here are some examples of those other conditions that experts have noted could hike premiums:”
· Acid Reflux
· Acne
· Asthma
· C-Section
· Celiac Disease
· Heart burn
· High cholesterol
· Hysterectomy
· Kidney Stones
· Knee surgery
· Lyme Disease
· Migraines
· Narcolepsy
· Pacemaker
· Postpartum depression
· Seasonal Affective Disorder
· Seizures
· “Sexual deviation or disorder”
· Ulcers
From the same ABC news article source listed above, they include a very important factor:
“Although it’s focused mostly on the minority of Americans who buy health coverage in the individual market, the GOP bill could also significantly impact the many who are covered by large employer plans. In one little-noted provision, employer plans could take advantage of state flexibility under the legislation to pick and choose which states’ rules to live by. That could allow them to impose annual and lifetime coverage limits, which are prohibited under Obamacare, and get rid of certain annual out-of-pocket spending caps.”
What this means is that once an individual or family reaches their annual or lifetime ‘cap’, they can no longer be covered and all other expenses are out-of-pocket. And if you are looking to the states and/or the so-called ‘Flexible Spending Accounts’ that they are trying to push, don’t count on it. The Republican-run states are pulling back on their coverage offerings and FSA accounts are only viable for those that can afford them. In the latter case, if it is a choice of feeding your family or putting money into the FSA account, which do you think will be a priority?
Why Pass a Bill that Hurts So Many?
Let’s face this question head-on: The GOP needed to pass a bill, ANY kind of bill that demonstrated their support for Trump. There have been so many losses on that side that they wanted to show the conservative supporters that they had more talent than just their historic ‘blocking’ abilities.
In a Politifact article, they indicate:
“One concern was that the full text of the revised bill and the relevant amendmentswas only posted on the Web on the evening of May 3, less than 24 hours before the House was scheduled to vote on it.
Another concern was that the Congressional Budget Office — the nonpartisan office that analyzes the impact of pending legislation — had not reviewed the new version of the bill.
The CBO had reviewed the original bill, and in doing so, it found that the measure would lead to an additional 24 million Americans being uninsured by 2026, compared to the number who would be uninsured if the current law was still in force.
Critics said Ryan and House Republicans were hypocritical for voting on a new version without a new CBO score, and they pointed to Ryan’s past comments as evidence.”
In other words, Ryan went back on his previous comments regarding the requirement of a CBO score, as well as knowing that the Senate would not even consider looking at a bill that didn’t have the score. Add to this the fact that some of the Republicans that voted for this bill came forward and admitted that they hadn’t even read it.
This was all for posturing to try to show their conservative constituents that Congress knew how to ‘lead’, instead of obstructing and if blame for lack of passage occurs, it will fall on the Senate and not them. This concept has been validated on numerous media sources, as well as from renowned investigative reporting ‘Palmer Report’ that said:
“Donald Trump invited the House Republicans over to the White House after the vote today, and they held a victory celebration out in the Rose Garden. This wasn’t merely Trump and the House GOP celebrating the passage of their own bill so they could feel good about it; this was a staged publicity stunt. They wanted to make a point of saying “We did it!” to anyone who will listen. If they thought this bill had a good chance of surviving the Senate, they’d be waiting to hold a public celebration event until after that vote. Instead, this is them hoisting a victory trophy at halftime, with the score still roughly tied, because they expect the second-half players on their own team to lose.
Not that the defeat of the AHCA in the Senate is a given, because it’s not, and you’d better fight for its defeat like people’s lives depend on it, because they do. But there’s a reason the House GOP rammed through this terrible bill today, which some of them have admitted they didn’t even bother to read first. The Republicans spent years bluffing by insisting they could replace Obamacare with something better if only they were given the chance. And when Trump shockingly won, the Republicans were suddenly given a chance they didn’t really want — and now they’re caught with their pants down.
If the AHCA does become law, moderate and swing voters will learn the hard way that it’s worse than Obamacare by every measure, and they’ll punish the Republicans for it in the midterms. But if the Republicans don’t repeal Obamacare, conservative voters will feel cheated out of what they were promised, and they’ll punish the Republicans in the midterms. It’s a no-win situation for the GOP, and someone has to be left holding the bag.”
The Bottom Line:
The conservative so-called ‘news’ sources are praising this bill by substantiating the failures of ACA and letting their followers know that they won’t be required to actually ‘have’ health insurance as well as bleating the same ‘misinformation’. The latter has included that many simply don’t know how health insurance has historically always worked: The costs for all are spread out over everyone’s health insurance rates, and the misled and ignorant conservatives have been ‘complaining’ that they don’t want to pay for the health problems of others. It continues to demonstrate that the far right grabs information that they know will appeal to their base and then ignores all of the real ‘facts’.
The reality of this badly done and quickly shoved through bill is that the midterms are looming very close. We hope they enjoyed their beer party, because they will be paying the price for this one in 2018.
