The Trump GOP Prescription For
America: Don’t Get Sick
This Republican health care bill would
actually kill people who need help most.
By Michael Winship
March 21, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Donald
Trump still insists he’s going to Make
America Great Again! Mind you, it won’t
be a healthy or vigorous America — in
fact, it will be coughing and wheezing
to the grave, but boy, will it be great!
If
you ever needed further evidence that
Trump doesn’t give a single good goddamn
about the people who elected him, just
look at his treacherous turnabout on
health care. This Republican “repeal and
replace” bill stinks on so many levels
I’m tempted to say it should be taken
far out to sea and dumped into the
deepest depths of the Mariana Trench but
I have too much regard for marine life,
even the kind with the big googly eyes
and the really scary teeth.
Remember
that Trump was the carnival barker
who declared during the campaign,
“I am going to take care of everybody. I
don’t care if it costs me votes or not.
Everybody’s going to be taken care of
much better than they’re taken care of
now.” And right before his inauguration
he told The Washington Post,
“We’re going to have insurance for
everybody. There was a philosophy in
some circles that if you can’t pay for
it, you don’t get it. That’s not going
to happen with us.”
Then along
comes the proposed Republican bill,
which over a decade, according to
the now-famous report from the
Congressional Budget Office,
would see 24 million fewer Americans
with coverage, doubling the number of
uninsured. Trump’s own supporters would
take it on the chin for
what he tweeted
is “our wonderful new health care bill.”
According
to
John McCormick at Bloomberg News:
“Counties that backed him would get less
than a third of the relief that would go
to counties where Hillary Clinton won.
The two individual tax cuts contained in
the Republican plan to replace Obamacare apply
only to high-earning workers and
investors, roughly those with incomes of
at least $200,000 for individuals and
$250,000 for married couples.”
And
remember all that nonsense about
Obamacare’s “death panels,” a falsehood
so rotten to the core it was declared
PolitiFact’s 2009 Lie of the Year?
Well, this Republican bill actually
would kill people. Those older
would pay more than the young, it would
strip Planned Parenthood of funding and
Medicaid programs would be slashed. It
would eliminate money for the
Prevention and Public Health Fund,
which provides epidemiology,
immunization and health-screening
programs. And there would be no mandate
that employers with 50 employees or more
provide coverage.
Julia Belluz at Vox
reports
on:“[V]ery high-quality studies on the
impacts of health insurance on
mortality, which come to some pretty
clear estimates. This research suggests
that we would see more than 24,000 extra
deaths per year in the US if 20 million
people lost their coverage. Again, 20
million is less than the
24 million
the CBO thinks will lose insurance by
2026. So the death toll from an
Obamacare repeal and replacement could
be even higher.”
Ignoring the Needy
Notice that Trump has barely lifted a
finger to assist those who need genuine
reform that would bring quality care to
all, the kind of help he promised as a
candidate. Instead, he has directed his
energies at helping Speaker Paul Ryan
win over right-wing House members by
promising to make the bill even crueler
to those who need health care the most.
Take a look
at this statement issued by tea partier
and Alabama Republican Rep. Robert
Aderholt after meeting with Trump on
Friday, a statement so mind-boggling
it’s worth
quoting in full:
“President Trump called me to the Oval
Office this morning to discuss the
American Healthcare Act, because of his
understanding that I could not support
the current language of the bill. I
expressed to the president my concern
around the treatment of older, poorer
Americans in states like Alabama. I
reminded him that he received
overwhelming support from Alabama’s
voters.
“The president listened to the fact that
a 64-year-old person living near the
poverty line was going to see their
insurance premiums go up from $1,700 to
$14,600 per year. The president looked
me in the eye and said, ‘These are my
people and I will not let them down. We
will fix this for them.’
“I also asked the president point blank
if this House bill was the one that he
supported. He told me he supports it
‘1,000 percent.’ After receiving the
president’s word that these concerns
will be addressed, I changed my vote to
yes.”
Can you believe it? Trump’s behind the
bill 1,000 percent, the President
claims, but don’t worry, we’ll fix it.
It’s hard to decide which of the two men
is behaving more hypocritically: Trump
saying he won’t let the people down or
Aderholt claiming to believe the
President actually will keep his word.
Each is endorsing a cutthroat scheme
that will bring nothing but grief to the
people but hundreds of billions in tax
breaks to the wealthy and vast profits
to the insurance industry.
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According
to
the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities:
“The top 400 highest-income taxpayers —
whose annual incomes average more than
$300 million apiece — each would receive
an average annual tax cut of about
$7 million, we estimate from
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data.”
Andy
Slavitt, who was President Obama’s
acting administrator of the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services
told The Washington Post,
“This is a massive tax cut for unpopular
industries and wealthy individuals. It
is about cutting care for lower-income
people, seniors, people with
disabilities and kids to pay for the tax
cut.”
This is,
in the words of Sen. Chris Murphy,
D-Connecticut,
“a dumpster fire of a bill that was
written on the back of a napkin behind
closed doors because Republicans know
this is a disaster.” But thanks to
ineptitude and an inchoate, ill-planned
rush to pass the legislation, it looks
as if the current Republican bill may be
on its way to failure, if not in the
House then in the Senate.
Lucky us — for now. But if the GOP and
Trump White House do manage to force on
us anything short of what’s really
needed – single-payer, universal health
care — we’re doomed to live in a nation
the motto of which may no longer be “In
God We Trust” but instead, “Die young
and leave a good-looking corpse.”
Michael Winship is the
Emmy Award-winning senior writer of
Moyers &
Company
and BillMoyers.com. Follow him on
Twitter at
@MichaelWinship.
[This
article first appeared at
http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-gop-prescription-america-dont-get-sick/]
