Don't get sick in America
Rob Wittman wants to know what you think, except he really doesn't
Polls, polls, polls. Wittman loves his opinion polls, but does he ever change his voting behavior because of the results? We doubt it.
He has aligned himself with the radical conservatives who simply want to destroy the ACA instead of proposing real alternatives. The result will be fewer people in the VA-01 who have access to affordable health insurance. Families USA suggests that about 102,000 constituents in VA-01 will be priced out of healthcare.
The current kerfuffle over healthcare (15 years?) has placed popular ACA premium support at the precipice of disaster. Fortune magazine healthcare expert John Driscoll called the elimination of ACA premium support “a tragedy in the making: higher premiums, lost coverage, and rising medical debt with millions losing coverage altogether.”
The Senate voted last week on two competing plans: extend ACA premium support for three years, and a collection of provisions that represent a healthcare plan. The GOP “plan” is don’t get sick (and if you do, you better be rich). Health Savings Accounts would be available only to those with the Orange and Catastrophic plans through the ACA exchanges. Once again, if you need a plan with low deductibles and low premium payments, you’re out of luck. One Republican involved in the talks asks, “What healthcare plan?” Would you want a health insurance plan cobbled together in the final days of the year?
According to the KFF: “Premium payments would still more than double under the GOP plan.” The underlying problem is ideology; the Republicans say they want you to be able to choose your healthcare plan; you need to have “skin in the game.”
Imagine that you need emergency surgery; would you want to tell the doctor, “Sorry, we’ll have to wait until I can find my own plan that will pay for this surgery?” Also, the cost of an individual healthcare plan would be many times more than that of a group policy.
Republicans believe that the ACA is socialized medicine although it could have been named after that famous “liberal” governor, Mitt Romney. If the GOP wanted real competition, they could add a public option to the ACA that would allow individuals to seek the best price from competing private insurance companies.
Finally, we have trouble understanding why GOP legislators want the American healthcare system to be pulverized. Could it have anything to do with pleasing their corporate donors? Perhaps we could ask that question on the next Wittman opinion poll.