Tag: trumpcare
Trumpcare

’Trumpcare’ Doesn’t Exist, But Facebook And Google Profit From ‘Garbage’ Health Insurance

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica

“Trumpcare" insurance will “finally fix healthcare," said an advertisement on Facebook.

A Google ad urged people to “Enroll in Trumpcare plans. Healthcare changes are coming."

The problem is, there's no such thing as “Trumpcare."

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How ’Trumpcare’ Could Drastically Lower Medical Costs

How ’Trumpcare’ Could Drastically Lower Medical Costs

In 2016, candidate Donald Trump promised to repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something terrific.” The replacement never materialized. The repeal, however, had been making progress in a piece-by-piece fashion. President Trump has made a frontal assault on the Affordable Care Act by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike it down altogether. As it happens, Obamacare has become popular, and so, with the next election approaching, Trump badly needs a replacement.

Let me offer ideas. Some elements of my Trumpcare 2020 plan may sound heartless and extreme. But several fit policy changes the administration has already put in motion.

Without further ado, here it is:

— Raise the Medicare eligibility to 85. Doing so would spare taxpayers the expense of subsidizing two more decades of older Americans’ medical care. Since people generally become more medically vulnerable after age 65, and affordable coverage would be impossible to find, certainly in the face of preexisting conditions, more elderly would die early for lack of health care. That would save still more money.

— Get rid of the Obamacare rule requiring all insurance plans in the federal marketplace to cover preventive services without cost to the patient. Examples include mammograms, blood pressure screening and testing for Type 2 diabetes. Not checking for these things would encourage the progress of chronic and terminal diseases, thus removing expensive Americans from the health care system.

— Let states cap Medicaid spending for certain low-income adults. This would cut health benefits for millions who received coverage under the ACA. Actually, Trump has already made this change. Congress would not do it with legislation, but he did it administratively. Curbing health care for low-income Americans younger than 65 would ensure that fewer of them reach the age of Medicare. In any case, the working poor don’t pay federal taxes.

— Provide full funding for homeopathic miracle cures. Arnica montana gel is said to relieve pain from osteoarthritis. Raspberry ketone pills claim to burn body fat. African mango supplements lower blood cholesterol, so they say.

Do these things work? Ask Dr. Google. There are lots of websites on which he says yes. And your cure’s costs fall well below Big Pharma’s price points.

— Subsidize fast food diets. Federal vouchers could be issued for the purchase of sweetened soft drinks, triple-bacon cheeseburgers, corn dogs and anything fried in hydrogenated fats.

Here again, Trump is already on the case, having announced plans to roll back Michelle Obama’s rules requiring that school lunches include healthy fruits and vegetables. While we’re at it, let’s repeal laws requiring the use of seat belts.

— Eliminate clean air and clean water programs. Though this initiative is already well on its way in the Trump administration, far more work can be done. The long-term strategy is to grow the environmental hazards that shorten lives. As already noted, death is cost-effective.

— Stop taxing cigarettes and alcohol. Cigarettes should actually be subsidized.

Research confirms that smokers ultimately save taxpayers money. The French government found that smokers may cost a lot in end-of-life medical care, but their lives are shorter. That means they have less need for pricy interventions common among the old — hip replacements, for example. By dying young, smokers also spend fewer years collecting retirement benefits.

Trump understands that with each passing day, the political risks of offing the ACA in broad daylight become greater. He must now pray that the Supreme Court doesn’t deep-six Obamacare before Election Day. Toward that end, he recently told the justices that there’s no hurry for a ruling. (After the election, no problem, we can assume.)

But in case of a political emergency, he can use my plan. Trumpcare 2020 is there for the taking.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

McConnell’s Obamacare Replacement Guts Coverage, Raises Costs For Tens Of Millions

McConnell’s Obamacare Replacement Guts Coverage, Raises Costs For Tens Of Millions

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

The latest Trumpcare bill released by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a political dealmaker’s version of putting lipstick on a pig—taking a colossally destructive bill hurting tens of millions and dressing it up so it can win enough votes to pass.

A side-by-side comparison of the text reveals that the GOP hasn’t budged an inch in its intention to cut federal subsidies of state-run Medicaid by one-third, which will severely hit the poor, single mothers with children and seniors in nursing homes.

For those buying private insurance, in addition to ending federal Obamacare subsidies, by incorporating more deregulation from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, anyone who is not youthful and naturally healthy will see premiums rise while what is covered in those plans will shrink. That translates into a double hit, on employers buying coverage for employees and on families and individuals facing higher out-of-pocket costs in emergencies.

McConnell’s new bill still ends Obamacare’s provisions that stopped insurers from rejecting people with pre-existing conditions, which is almost everybody over age 50. It reinstitutes lifetime coverage caps for insurers, which will leave people exposed to medical bankruptcy. And it eliminates Obamacare’s requirement that commercial insurance policies cover essential benefits, like maternity care.

“I knew this bill was unfixable. What I didn’t count on was that it would get worse,” tweeted Andy Slavitt, who ran Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act for President Obama. “There is an even bigger endorsement of higher deductibles with new catastrophic plan provision.”

Digging deeper into McConnell’s bill, one finds apparent giveaways to try to wrest votes from Republicans who are on the fence for completely different reasons. On the furthest right, the inclusion of Cruz’s amendment will create two risk pools—one for regular policyholders and another for the very sick. People who want wide protection against chronic, catastrophic and life-threatening illnesses will be priced out of the market under the far right’s fictitious banner of giving people more “freedom.”

Also pandering to the tax-cutting and make-the-rich-even-richer wing of the party is the fact that McConnell’s latest bill preserves 80 percent of the taxes that earlier versions were going to repeal. That’s being portrayed in some mainstream media accounts as an improvement and something less than an outright giveaway, which is ludicrous. The hundreds of billions that will be taken away from Medicaid will offset these taxes.

The bill also seeks to win the support of senators from Ohio and West Virginia by putting in more money for opioid addiction treatment, and boosting state subsidies for Florida, Louisiana and other red states. It also creates a $100 billion tax break for people who open health care savings accounts, enlarging the role for those fee-skimming middlemen with an option that only people with high enough incomes can afford to establish and use. And the McConnell bill also creates another industry giveaway, a $70 billion account to shore up insurers against the economic turbulence the rest of this bill will create.

The national trade association for insurance companies is not impressed by any of this, realizing that the GOP’s “fixes” are going to turn them into the most hated industry in America—as if multitudes from coast to coast hadn’t already lost their patience with rising premiums, co-pays and deductibles before 2016’s “repeal and replace” charade. Their lobby group, AHIP, or America’s Health Insurance Plans, railed against Cruz’s proposals in lobbyist-speak earlier this week, in a press release with the sub-heading, “Policies that increase uncertainty or threaten instability should be avoided.”

AHIP concluded, “The individual market faces well-documented challenges to stability, including higher premiums, lower-than-expected enrollment, fewer plan choices, and risk pool problems in certain states and markets. Policy solutions exist to create more stability in the market by reducing premiums and attracting enrollment of younger and healthier individuals. In this context, it is important that policymakers avoid policies that threaten to further increase uncertainty or threaten stability. Such policies include opening up non-compliant plans to new enrollees, bifurcating the risk pool, or allowing plans covered by different rules to compete in the same market.”

This isn’t Bernie Sanders; this is the insurance lobby. As for Sanders, he posted a video on his Twitter page saying this GOP-created insanity is making the strongest possible case for a national singer-payer, Medicare-for-all system. “The UK can do it, Canada can do it, France can do it, Scandinavia can do it,” he said.

Meanwhile, other Washington-based health consumer lobbyists said the time has come to trash the GOP and start bipartisan talks about creating a system that meets people’s needs. How that will happen, when the GOP wrote this bill in secret and ducked meetings with their constituents is anybody’s guess. But that is the line being offered on Thursday.

“Today’s release of the updated Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) confirms what we already knew: this broken bill can’t be fixed,” said Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center. “This tweaked BCRA still ends Medicaid as we know it, and it still yanks health coverage out from under millions of Americans, including older adults, people with disabilities and those with pre-existing conditions.”

“Most Americans oppose the BCRA’s untenable cuts to Medicaid and its disregard for the families who need guaranteed, affordable health coverage,” Baker continued. “In drafting the BCRA, Senate leaders have avoided public debate, hearings and even their own constituents… The American people have asked for, and deserve, an open, bipartisan approach to making health care more affordable for everyone.”

What comes next in this process? The Congressional Budget Office will score the bill, meaning it will say how many people will be hurt by the cuts in government subsidies and coverage cuts, and how many will benefit from tax cuts and other giveaways. Then McConnell will try to bring the bill to the floor, where if necessary, he will introduce more vote-getting amendments that will not be reviewed by the CBO.

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America’s democracy and voting rights. He is the author of several books on elections and the co-author of Who Controls Our Schools: How Billionaire-Sponsored Privatization Is Destroying Democracy and the Charter School Industry (AlterNet eBook, 2016).

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