Your Money or Your Life<\/p>\n
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.)<\/em> <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n The traditional \u201cliberal\u201d argument is that \u201cconservatives\u201d 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, \u201cskip their IPhone to buy insurance,\u201d or Roger Marshall saying, \u201c\u2026 some people just don\u2019t want healthcare.\u201d But that\u2019s not really a fair argument. Let\u2019s assume (danger!!) that everyone wants people to have access to health care, it\u2019s just a matter of paying for it.<\/p>\n Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has stated, \u201ceveryone will have access to health insurance\u2026\u201d 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. <\/p>\n 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. So, will the people without insurance be left to die? NO one wants that, not even Chaffetz and Marshall. But here\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n Uninsured hospital costs will NOT be \u201ceaten\u201d by the hospitals, those costs will be spread among the \u201cpaying\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Your money or your life? It\u2019s our money for other lives, and we get to pay for it either way. The Trump\/Ryan plan makes sure that we don\u2019t take as much off of the government books, but it doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t pay. It just means we pay through \u201cmarket forces,\u201d the conservative way of saying that we\u2019ll pay more, for less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nSecond: the subsidies did NOT depend on the amount of taxes you paid, but you can\u2019t get a tax credit if you didn\u2019t pay any taxes. The least able to afford insurance, those who didn\u2019t make any or enough to pay taxes, will be the most likely not to be able to get it.<\/p>\n