The so-called health bill that Senate Republican leaders are trying to push through this week would mean untold misery for millions of Americans for decades to come.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill would take away medical insurance from 22 million people, including 15 million by next year, making health care unaffordable for many and leaving illnesses and injuries untreated. The CBO also found the bill would raise out-of-pocket costs for most of those with individual insurance policies; older Americans and those with pre-existing conditions would be hit especially hard.
The bill would let states allow insurers to eliminate coverage for essential services like maternity care and drug abuse treatment. These hits would force millions of people to forego needed care. We know from a team based at the Harvard school of public health that, by 2026, nearly identical cuts passed by House Republicans would mean tens of thousands more avoidable deaths each year.
More family stress, more unwanted pregnancies, and more women with no access to medical care.
Further, to placate their base, the Senate Republicans’ bill cuts off all federal funding for Planned Parenthood for a year, which would mean a 40 percent reduction to an organization that is the primary health care provider to millions of women. That means more family stress, more unwanted pregnancies, and more women with no access to medical care.
As much damage as the bill would do in the next decade, it would continue devastating our health care system for generations. That’s because it would trigger the slow strangling of Medicaid, starting with a cap on federal Medicaid funding that would force states to kick people off Medicaid and/or eliminate their benefits.
These cuts would touch every working family in America. Medicaid insures half the births in America. It insures 30 percent of adults and 60 percent of children with disabilities, and nearly two-thirds of nursing home residents.
For Medicaid-dependent nursing home residents, it would force staff cuts, leading to more bed sores, more falls, more infections, more patient abuse, and filth.
Choking off Medicaid would be particularly disastrous for victims of the opioid epidemic. One-eighth of the people on Medicaid have drug abuse problems, many with opioid addiction, and Medicaid has been a growing source of treatment for them.
Choking off Medicaid would be particularly disastrous for victims of the opioid epidemic.
While the Senate bill includes $2 billion for opioid addiction treatment, the Pennsylvania Rehabilitation and Community Providers Association notes that $2 billion wouldn’t even be enough for the opioid addicts in Pennsylvania.
President Trump is wrong when he says Obama’s Affordable Care Act is dying. Right now, it’s providing tens of millions of Americans with medical insurance with lower out-of-pocket costs than what Senate Republican leaders are proposing. Its biggest problem is that Trump and the Republican Congress are continually trying to sabotage it.
We need to stop them from ravaging our health care system. If Congress does not vote “no” on Republican plans to devastate American health care, it will face voters’ wrath in 2018.
Ramón Castellblanch is a professor of health education at San Francisco State.