It’s now clear just how bereft of ideas the Republicans are when it comes to health care.
They campaigned for years on repealing the Affordable Care Act, but now that they have the power to do it, they can’t pull the trigger!
Why?
Because they know that it has helped millions of people and they know that if they simply repeal it and destroy that benefit, there will be hell to pay at the ballot box. What it means is that all the posturing and criticism and lies that the law is a “disaster” is so much hooey. Just politics they used to win Republican primaries.
As Bernie Sanders pointed out the other night on CNN at a town hall meeting in economically devastated McDowell County West Virginia, House speaker Paul D. Ryan’s bill is not about health, it is only about cutting costs, giving already wealthy people a huge tax break, and shoving working class people 50 and over off the insurance roles.
The Congressional Budget Office report proved all that beyond a doubt by saying 24 million people would lose health insurance under the Ryan plan in less than a decade. If that weren’t bad enough, the bill would defund addictions treatment at a time of a national epidemic of overdose deaths!
And As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank said in his March 15, 2017 column, the problems encountered by some people who can’t afford higher premiums and have deductibles that are too high have been caused by the Republicans themselves who have undermined and sabotaged the law at every turn, especially since they took power January 20.
The best solution is sitting, ignored by congress, in the form of HR 676, which Senator Sanders also mentioned to the now fearful Trump supporters in coal country- most of whom are getting comprehensive health care for the first time under the Medicaid expansion. That resolution would expand Medicare to everyone, and give everyone what they need, while taking away premiums, deductibles, etc, in exchange for a moderate tax everyone would pay. No more competing health insurance claims, forms, rules, denials, etc. No more people going bankrupt because they can’t afford help even WITH insurance. It is the only solution that makes sense and it would solve all the problems because everyone in the country would be included.
We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. We can do this.
Larry Carson, Columbia
Do the Most Good - Howard County 