Showing posts with label insurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insurance. Show all posts

Sunday, March 19, 2017

The Unconscionable Republican Health Care Proposal

According to The New York Times, reporting on the CBO report on the Republican’s American Health Care Act, the impact of the Act on Americans in their 60s would be catastrophic.  In addition, millions of the poor who benefited from Medicaid expansion will loose their insurance.

The proposed law bases subsidies for people not on their income … like just about every other subsidy system in the world does … but on their age.  So for example, a 21 year-old would have a net (after subsidy) premium of $1,450 a year.  A 40 year-old would have a net premium of $2,400.  A 64-year old would have a net premium of $14,600!

So a 60 year-old, low-middle income person earning too much to be eligible for Medicaid and too young for Medicare, would be stuck with a huge bill that he could not afford.   All commentators assume that such people will opt out of the system which will leave them uninsured.  If the Republicans create a high-risk pool, which in the past was typically very expensive and provided bad coverage, that would not be a practical option. 

For the Republicans to do this to 60-year-olds in order to keep premiums down for the young, encouraging them to buy insurance, is evidence, if that were needed, that Republicans lack a social conscience.  It is unconscionable.

For the Republicans to also gut Medicaid expansion resulting in millions of the poor losing their insurance while at the same time providing for a $600 billion tax cut over 10 years for wealthy Americans, as they would no longer be subject to the taxes that had been assessed to pay for Obamacare subsidies, so that the net effect of the act is still a significant budget saving for the government, is more proof of their lack of social conscience and is unconscionable.

In their press conferences, they of course do not mention these details.  Instead, they emphasize the CBO finding that overall rates will go down, after initially rising for a few years.  And that the Act would result in savings of $337 billion over 10 years.  This is deceitfulness at its worst.

All middle-aged and older Americans, and the poor, should bombard their Congressmen with calls and emails telling them to vote No on the American Health Care Act.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Education and Health - Fundamental Rights

We have been bludgeoned over the past few years with the Republican’s mantra that if you haven’t made it, it’s your fault (see my post, “The Mendaciousness of the Responsibility Game”).  So it was with a huge feeling of nostalgia that I was reminded recently of a time not so long ago when a large segment of Republicans had a very different perspective on life and the role of government, or at least the role of the broader society.

In reviewing a new biography of Nelson Rockefeller, the reviewer noted Rockefeller’s credo, “If you don’t have good education and good health, then I feel society has let you down.”  WOW!  How times have changed.

If someone said that today, even if a Democrat said that today, they would be viewed as a left-wing radical.  It sounds so over the top.

But it isn’t.  Let me quote, as I often do, from the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

If one is going to have a meaningful right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, certainly two of the most essential elements of that right are having a good education and having good health.  No one would argue with that.

But the Declaration goes further and states that the purpose of government is to secure these rights, which in this context would mean access to good education and access to good health.  I am not downplaying the importance of personal responsibility.  As the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”  But it is the government’s responsibility to provide the water.

So at a minimum, the government is responsible under this standard for supplying access to a good education (meaning good schools, good teachers, etc.) and good health (meaning comprehensive health care ... medical, psychological, and dental ... that is affordable or free, depending on your circumstances).  Note: Obamacare has not come close to providing the latter because although the basic premiums may be affordable due to government subsidies, the large deductibles and out-of-pocket caps of the basic plans discourage people from getting health care except in emergencies.

If that is the minimum, you might ask, what else is there?  While good schools can make a huge difference even in the midst of a bad inner-city neighborhood, growing up in an area where poverty, drugs, and crime are the norm and often impact family life creates major obstacles to being able to take advantage of a good school.  

Government, together with private agencies and organizations, must do much more to improve the broader context within which such children grow up.  Whether it’s creating more jobs, providing adult education, making prisons focus on rehabilitation, creating social policies that encourage two-parent households (as opposed to the old welfare rule that broke up families by penalizing them if an adult male was living in the household) ... there are ample ways that government and society working together could dramatically change the context of inner-city life.

It is time for Rockefeller’s credo to become the credo of government and of our society.  It is past time for this great, rich, but unconscionably unequal, nation to live up to the promise stated in the Declaration of Independence.