Tuesday, June 27, 2017

The Biggest Take Away of All? Trump Calls It Mean, But Will He Stop It?

During his campaign for President, Trump promised to replace Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) with better health care coverage for more people. The "repeal and replace" bill that came out of the Republican House, and now the Republican Senate's bill do not measure up.  In fact, they are thinly disguised efforts to give the wealthiest Americans tax breaks that they don't need and pay for them by cutting health care coverage for tens of millions of people.  Trump has called the bills mean.  Is this just empty talk? Will he cave to the Republican Congress or insist they come up with something that actually serves the people who voted for him?

There are many helpful analyses of the bills available. Here are links to a few:

On winners and losers created by the Senate (and House) bills:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/23/15857044/senate-health-bill-winners-losers-poor-wealthy-disabled

On the "process" the Senate followed and the result:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/6/26/1675303/-These-pictures-are-worth-a-thousand-words-and-an-untold-number-of-lives

Another way to visualize the trade-off in benefits:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/26/15862002/tax-cuts-ahca-republican-health-plan

Keep the pressure on your Senators and Representatives.  These bills are disaster.  They need to take steps to stabilize the Affordable Care Act.  The Democrats are ready to work on it.  As Kevin Drum at Mother Jones puts it:
  ... “Keep Obamacare but fix it” is practically the Democratic rallying cry these days. There’s hardly a Democrat alive who doesn’t loudly and publicly support this position. A couple of months ago all 48 Democratic senators signed a letter promising, “If repeal is abandoned, we stand ready to work with you to help all Americans get the affordable health care they need.” Every liberal rally and march includes people carrying “Don’t repeal it, fix it!” signs. I’ve personally written multiple times about this, most recently two days ago: “Obamacare’s modest problems could be fixed with nothing more than a few minor changes and additional funding of $5-10 billion or so.” Those minor changes include, possibly, a higher mandate penalty and continuing to fund the CSR subsidies. Nothing all that hard.

A detailed report on ways to stabilize the ACA can be found here:
http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2016/rwjf430816

But Trump has said if there's no repeal and replace bill, just let Obamacare "crash and burn".  That doesn't sound to me like he's on the side of those who voted him into office.