Your Money or Your Life
As Congress, the President, and the rest of the country discusses what will happen with the US Government involvement in health care, the issue comes down to: your money or your life. The Congressional Budget Office scored the current Trump/Ryan health insurance bill as reducing the US Government deficit by $33 billion a year over the next ten years. The current deficit is $441 billion and projects to $1.4 trillion for 2027. (The deficit is how much more the government will spend in a year than it will bring in.)
Reducing the deficit would be a good thing. The problem: The CBO also projects that 24 million Americans will lose their health care coverage if the Trump/Ryan bill passes.
The traditional “liberal” argument is that “conservatives” would let people die rather than pay for health care. Some statements by conservative Congressmen seem to echo that idea: Jason Chaffetz telling folks to, “skip their IPhone to buy insurance,” or Roger Marshall saying, “… some people just don’t want healthcare.” But that’s not really a fair argument. Let’s assume (danger!!) that everyone wants people to have access to health care, it’s just a matter of paying for it.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has stated, “everyone will have access to health insurance…” under the Trump/Ryan plan. Those are carefully chosen words. Having access does NOT mean being able to afford health insurance. We all have access to buying Porsches, but not all of us can pay for them.
The Trump/Ryan bill replaces the Affordable Care Act subsidies (the government pays for part of the insurance) with tax credits (the government credits part of the taxes you paid to pay for insurance.) Two problems: first the subsidies were a percentage of insurance cost and increased with increasing premiums, the credits are a set amount.
Second: the subsidies did NOT depend on the amount of taxes you paid, but you can’t get a tax credit if you didn’t pay any taxes. The least able to afford insurance, those who didn’t make any or enough to pay taxes, will be the most likely not to be able to get it.
So, will the people without insurance be left to die? NO one wants that, not even Chaffetz and Marshall. But here’s the effect of not having insurance. Those folks are less able to access preventive care (it costs) and therefore will be more likely to end up with serious but preventable illnesses. They then WILL be treated, but in an emergency room and hospital setting, where costs are the highest.
Uninsured hospital costs will NOT be “eaten” by the hospitals, those costs will be spread among the “paying” customers. This will result in higher hospital bills for everyone else, higher costs to insurance companies, and ultimately higher insurance premiums to EVERYONE (not just those using federal health insurances.) So instead of either paying more taxes, or having a larger deficit; the costs don’t disappear, they get transferred to EVERYONE.
Your money or your life? It’s our money for other lives, and we get to pay for it either way. The Trump/Ryan plan makes sure that we don’t take as much off of the government books, but it doesn’t mean we don’t pay. It just means we pay through “market forces,” the conservative way of saying that we’ll pay more, for less.
My favorite one by far, but then again I work for a health ins company so this “hits home” personally and professionally.
Just started reading your blog. Who knew. Looking forward to more.
Signed, a friend from a while back.