The United States finds itself once again facing a self-inflicted health-care crisis.
To be sure, the nation is not up against tough health-care challenges, such as another pandemic, or how to ensure that people who need mental health care can get it. Because of Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, the healthcare system in every state, town and community is about to absorb the unavoidable shock inflicted by Trump’s spending and tax cut bill.
Every single consumer will pay for the mistake. Rural, middle-class, poor and elderly Americans will be hardest hit.
In what looks like a ham-handed attempt at cruelty, Trump and just barely enough Republicans needed to pass the tax-cut-and-spend bill agreed to force massive cuts of the nation’s Medicaid program, about $1 trillion over a decade, back-loaded.
Republicans tried to sell the scheme to Americans, saying that it would “strengthen” Medicaid by forcing some people to work to get the benefits and ensure that no non-citizens could qualify.
Trump and Republican members of Congress, including Colorado representatives Gabe Evans of Thornton and Lauren Boebert of Windsor, offered numbers and arguments that made no sense to any real independent experts. They agreed that once the cuts and changes take full force, far fewer Americans will qualify for the insurance, and those who do will receive fewer benefits.
It does not mean that those people won’t be sick, or as sick.
The cruel part of all this is that there will be people who become injured or ill who won’t receive medical care, because they have no way to pay for it.
Many of those supporting the cuts to publicly funded healthcare see this as the consequences of “choosing” to be poor, underpaid or underemployed.
What they don’t realize is that removing $1 trillion from the U.S. healthcare system does not create $1 trillion in tax and healthcare savings. That $1 trillion cut would provide for $1 trillion in services. Many hospitals and healthcare practices depend on that revenue as part of their business model. Since much of those “savings” will impact small and rural hospitals, and many fixed overhead costs are just that, fixed, existing insured and wealthy patients will pay more for the same service, most likely much more. That’s according to every real expert weighing in on this, just like they did with Obamacare.
These are the experts who said that the cost of healthcare would rise under Obamacare, because Congress failed to control prices, allowing hospitals, doctors and insurance companies to charge what they want.
President Barack Obama signed his signature health bill into law in 2010 because Americans had complained fiercely about mushrooming insurance costs and insurance companies that charged outrageous rates and then yanked away coverage when someone got sick.
Obama was mistaken in thinking that if he created a plan that appeased everybody, insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, poor people and sick people, we could create a health-care system that gave us what we all wanted.
In appeasing insurance companies, Obama set in motion a race to the bottom for high-premiums for crappy policies that require huge out-of-pocket expenses. Insurance companies complain that despite that, they can’t afford to keep at this scam because people are so sick and treating them to stents and statins all the time is making them go broke.
The answer is obvious to everyone but Washington.
Somebody has to lose for consumers to gain. It’s not complicated nor mysterious. It’s simple economics. Somebody has to make less money for what they’re doing right now: Drug companies, doctors, hospitals, bedpan makers. If they don’t make less, then Americans pay more.
Already, study after study, year after year makes clear that Americans pay not just more for healthcare than other Western nations, but they pay far more and get far less than any other modern nation on the planet. The nation spends 17% of all the money we make on healthcare, nearly double for far more inferior healthcare than what citizens in many European nations pay.
Thanks to Trump and complicit Republicans, that’s about to get even worse.
The rest of the world has proven repeatedly that the only thing that works for citizens and the healthcare industry is some kind of single-payer universal care. In the U.S., it’s called Medicare, and it works. Rather than preserve it for the most expensive group of Americans there are to treat, just offer it to everybody. Healthy, sick, young, old, employed and unemployed. We all pay in. Medicare controls the costs. For-profit hospitals lose some. Wealthy doctors lose some. Wealthier drug companies lose some. Insurance companies lose large.
But Americans win, just like in every other successful nation that shakes their heads at our stubborn stupidity.
Congress should take this opportunity to avoid the imminent catastrophe they’ve created by clawing into Medicaid, and create a national single-payer, public option, and then watch what happens.
These cuts need to be made for two reasons: First, we are broke and cannot continue to afford this widespread welfare state. Second, these policies promote laziness and sloth by giving for free that which should be earned by gainful employment.
Federal monies help support State Medicaid programs, but they are administered by the State. It is the State that will decide how these monies are apportioned, not the Federal government. The State of Colorado will decide if the cuts affect those who are better off and able to work or those who are illegal foreigners or the poorest and needy. What do you think they will decide?
Ideally, they will decide on the care that most people deserve.
We are just about alone in refusing to provide health insurance to all our citizens. It has been an embarrassment for decades. My friends in the UK just shake their heads at our stupidity.
Outlays for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services totaled $2.1 trillion last fiscal year. Taking out the taxes for Medicare Part A, which was the only revenue those brought in, the delta equaled our deficit last FY.
The last thing your side wants to do is actually pay the taxes required to cover all the medical freebees expected of “universal health care” you supposedly “deserve.” Typical marxist fantasias.
I wish all conservatives, Republicans and capitalist believing citizens would come to the realization that I now believe. A one payee health care situation is the best way for a society to endure. That is for any society, just like a police force, and national defense , health care is of total importance.
We weren’t a Third World country before Medicare and Medicaid were established. In fact, 60 years ago a normal live birth and two nights in a private room cost $1,000 inflation-adjusted. Today, UC Health charges $25,000 for the same service, and the insurance company might knock that down to $17,000.
I’d rather pay the $1,000 than shell out my current insurance premiums for a $17K third-payer “benefit.”
This editorial says out loud what most people need to hear. Health insurance is a scam. None of us knows what any health care service should cost. This system has been perpetuated through corruption by the GOP. First, they serve the wealthy and the corporate world. They will privatize anything they can, and the results will always cost more than they should because private companies need to show a profit, and the CEO and C-suite inhabitants think they deserve exorbitant salaries. We need to get real. Health insurance should be gone, and we should standardize service costs, so the single-payer has a reasonable expectation of real values! We need to adopt this system and step into the modern concept of healthcare that the developed world has accepted. We will reap the benefits by lowering costs!
Mr. Kane: A free market system is the economy our country was based on and works well. Competition between vendors is what keeps prices down as customers look for the best value and vote with their pocketbooks. Contrary to your claims, anything the government runs turns into a big mess rife with fraud, mismanagement and corruption. This is true with Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare. The free market system is far better than anything the government can administer. The only problem is that some cannot afford healthcare, just like some cannot afford to feed themselves. We have “safety nets” in place for those who are elderly, disabled or truly cannot work. Socialism is a faulty system, as we have seen time and time again throughout the world.
Can you explain a time when you use the US “free market” health care system and its competitive price structure?
Jennifer: Do you have health insurance? Did you chose which company to use? I chose which company to use based on coverage options, premiums and providers they contract with. Companies I deem best for my needs I chose, the same approach we all use for all consumer products we select. Companies and providers are under pressure to provide the best value for the money or they may go out of business. The government’s role is only to insure competition by preventing collusion and breaking up monopolies. This is the free market in action. “Free” here means free from government price controls. Maybe I don’t understand your question.
I don’t get all the talk of socialism as soon as health care is mentioned. As a society don’t we decide what services we want to have and then arrange for government incomes to pay for those services, some at the national level, state, county, or city wide. Our military is paid for from the entire national tax base, the water supply by our municipality. Interstate roads by national taxes, state highways by state fees.
If we decide as a nation, that social security is important for all seniors, a national tax is collected to pay for that. If we decide that pre school is important for all kids to get a better start in life, so that our country can prosper from more productive members, there could be an allotment for that too.
Health care is no different to my mind. As an empathetic person I am uncomfortable seeing 250,000 bankruptcies a year due to health care expenses, or listening to folks who need a service that is not covered by their insurance provider, or the copay is just too high, or their deductible hasn’t been met. The Social Security Administration’s administrative costs are under 5%. If our health care payment system could work at that cost, everyone could be covered for all services at a lower cost than we currently pay. It’s not socialism, it’s ‘doing unto others’. It’s done not only in many capitalistic countries from Europe to Tawain. Some have private health care providers, some like the UK have a national provider. None pay more per citizen than we do yet cover all their citizens, and all have a longer life expectancy than we. It really doesn’t seem like socialism, just an efficient way to pay common expenses.