Prior to the enactment of the ACA our health care system failed to provide insurance to 18 percent of our citizens. The insurance companies did not offer insurance to those with pre-existing conditions. As many as 40,000 people died each year because of the lack of access to reasonable health care. Many families were forced into bankruptcy because they reached the annual maximum benefit dollars in their insurance policy. The insurance companies purposely tried to avoid insuring the most ill in the nation.
All of this is understandable in a market system where the company’s first obligation is to the stockholders. However, unlike other products provided by the market, health care should have as its priority not profits but the well-being of the customer.
The Obama administration and the Congress, after a lengthy public process, passed the ACA without a single Republican vote. Obamacare addressed many of the deficiencies existing at the time but certainly there are issues that in a healthier democracy could be improved. That is not likely in today’s hyper-partisan political environment.
Instead we have had seven years of Republican bumper sticker rhetoric promising to repeal and replace Obamacare. During that entire time and including today, the Republicans have been unable to develop a politically viable alternative. Instead the Republicans in the House passed legislation that would have repealed parts of the ACA but the Senate, in its wisdom, decided to craft their own alternative. The Congressional Budget Office determined that the Senate bill would have denied health care insurance to more than 20 million people. It failed only because three Republican senators including John McCain, while struggling with brain cancer, voted nay.
One interesting aside is that this attempt by the Republicans to repeal has awakened the public to the reality of what repeal means to so many people. Now in spite of the seven years of political rhetoric a majority of Americans support Obamacare. It is now clear that the Republican replace strategy is to return us to those golden health care days that existed before Obamacare.
Now the president, who repeatedly promised as a candidate and as president that we will have great health care for all, is intent on continuing to destroy Obama’s legacy by taking actions to cause the ACA to fail. His most recent decision to cancel the Cost Sharing Subsidies that provide benefits to single persons earning from $12,000 to $30,000 will likely cause the insurance companies to raise Silver level plan premiums by 20 percent while increasing the nation’s deficit.
None of this threatens me personally, although I am bit concerned that if the Republicans prevail in their attack against health care used by those benefitting from the ACA, Paul Ryan is waiting in the wings to go after Medicare. My primary concern is for the many members of my large and diverse family who will in the future have to live with the consequences of our failures today.
George Stoddard, Ivins, is a retired clinical mental health counselor.
