Fecteau: Healthcare Bill from Hell

Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Matt Fecteau, GoLocalPDX Guest MINDSETTER™

The long wait is over; finally, the U.S. Senate has revealed its own version of the healthcare bill, and it is bad. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office issued a devastating report saying that 22 million people could lose their healthcare coverage by 2026.

This is a morbid improvement over the U.S. House bill with an estimated 23 million people losing coverage, but still a shocking finding.  

The U.S. Senate Republicans drafted this bill behind closed doors for a reason. This bill is cruel and flatly hurtful to the American people. U.S. Senators like Ted Cruz were debating a bill that would literally kill people. In fact, hundreds of thousands could die yearly under the Senate bill with no access to critical preventative care or affordable coverage.  

This is indeed the healthcare bill from hell. The bill pays for tax cuts for high-income earners with healthcare coverage cuts to regular people – the sick, the meek, and the old (everyone unless you are rich). Apparently, the Republicans have shown, once again, money talks on Capitol Hill.  

Despite promises from then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the campaign level, Medicaid is cut in the billions. Nevertheless, President Trump’s White House adviser Kellyanne Conway won’t call them cuts; she says “getting Medicaid back to where it was” pre-Obamacare (a complete, yet typical bald-faced lie we expect from Mrs. Conway).  

After criticizing Obamacare as being in a death spiral, I guess Republicans fell in love with those alleged death spirals. In fact, Republicans are about to lite a match and burn the it down ensuring insurance is both unaffordable and unattainable to anyone not wealthy – the GOP way. By law, insurers will have to cover everyone, but would not mandate individuals buy insurance. This would ensure that “death spiral” that they claim was brought on by Obamacare; increasing premiums, deductibles, and copayments to unaffordable levels (the chief criticism of Obamacare!).  

This terrible bill leaves a lot of people behind. Access to quality, affordable health care saves everyone money in the long-term, and more importantly, saves lives. Mr. Trump and Congress either fail to see that or simply don’t care – probably a combination.  

In other words, it is business as usual on Capitol Hill with the GOP in control. Don’t worry though, their health care coverage won’t be cut – they are more important than peasants like you and me.   

Matt Fecteau ([email protected]) is a former White House national security intern and Iraq War veteran. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewFecteau