Recently, in a speech, Donald Trump blasted the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) for premium rates going up by 35 to 55 percent, along with higher deductibles.
According to PolitiFact, Trump is partially accurate. Some premiums in some insurance plans in some regions are indeed expected to go up that high. However, estimates for the national average are much lower, from 4.4 percent to 13 percent.
Trump says ObamaCare must be totally scrapped as it’s a “complete disaster.” Well, it’s not a complete disaster or the train wreck so many had predicted.
There are about 10 million more people who now have health insurance who could not afford it before. In Minnesota, the statistics are especially gratifying for children where their uninsured rate fell from 8.2 percent in 2013 to 4.9 percent in 2014.
Overall, the drop in uninsured people is the largest decrease since 2008. About two-thirds of those people have insurance through their employer-based programs, but the biggest increases in enrollment have come through the ObamaCare private-insurance interchanges or via Medicaid.
Some states (Texas, Florida and Mississippi) refused to accept the federal expansion of Medicaid and, thus, many millions of their residents who otherwise would have care do not have it. It is an enlightening fact the state with the lowest number of uninsured people is Massachusetts, with only 3.9 percent of people unemployed. That is the state which began RomneyCare years ago, the same program on which ObamaCare is based.
Unfortunately, 10.4 percent of Americans still do not have health insurance. There are so many cost variables in insurance premiums and deductibles region to region, based on so many factors, that it can be a crazy-quilt system. Thus, though it’s not the unmitigated disaster some claim, there is no doubt ObamaCare is far from perfect. A single-payer Canadian-style system for universal coverage would be infinitely preferable, just as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been preaching and as Trump used to recommend not too many years ago.
I’ve known too many people in my life, including some relatives, who could not afford insurance and who now have it thanks to the ACA. They are now healthier and happier because of it. That is why I have long championed ObamaCare as being better than nothing, although I have long said and written, too, if the Affordable Care Act becomes unaffordable either through premium increases or higher deductibles, it must be tweaked, strengthened or even scrapped. But not until another system is ready to replace it. And that is not likely to happen because the mule-headed opponents of the ACA have never offered a viable replacement system, other than the feeble solution of health-savings accounts or pie-in-sky schemes for increased competition. How are hard-working people with no disposable income whatsoever going to save for expensive health-care costs? Nor are inadequate tax-credits going to be the answer.
Whoever is elected president will determine the course of health care in this country for many years, depending on the whims of whichever majorities are elected in the U.S. Congress. With vicious determination, those Tea Party darlings Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have long promised they would repeal ObamaCare and shred every trace of it. They voted dozens of times, in shows of impotent political bravado, to repeal the ACA. Cruz, “ol’ Green Eggs and Ham” himself, even filibustered in the Senate like a spoiled bully, engineering the government into a shutdown because of his rabid opposition to ACA.
Jeb Bush also called for a total repeal of ObamaCare.
Trump, too, would repeal it, although he, at least, acknowledges there must be some kind of universal access to health care. However, his proposals are vague to non-existent now he’s “evolved,” as he put it, away from a Canadian-style solution.
Sanders said he wouldn’t dismantle ObamaCare until a one-payer system is in place, but that is bound to be a long time coming because most in Congress won’t dare approve such a “socialist” solution, even though one-payer systems are working just fine throughout the world, in some cases more cost-efficient and with better outcomes than the American system.
Hillary Clinton said she believes the ACA must remain but must be improved, that a one-payer system is out of the question at this point.
This is what Trump said in an interview:
Question: But the single payer (idea), you’re not interested anymore?
Trump: No. No, these are different times. And over the years, you are going to change your attitudes. You’re going to learn things and you’re going to change. And I have evolved on that issue. I have evolved on numerous issues.
Well, it’s become clear great numbers of Americans are evolving, too – away from corrupt congressional business-as-usual policies dictated by super-rich donors. It’s refreshing that in rally after rally, huge crowds are thrilling to Sanders’ messages of income inequality and the need for universal health care.
Maybe ObamaCare should be tossed out, after all – for a one-payer system. Dare we hope?
