If this were a movie, no one would believe it. How do you hurt the people, how do you cause the death of your constituents knowingly? Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explains, well he sort of explains it, anyway.
It is a fact that Obamacare saved the lives and economics of millions of Americans. Yet, many of those millions voted for a man intent on repealing it.
I am sure many have heard the story about a dog with a bone in his mouth walking over a bridge crossing a river. The dog sees the reflection of the bone in the water. Because of optics, the reflection of the bone is substantially larger than the bone itself. What does the dog do? He drops the bone and jumps to get the bigger bone. Surprise! The bigger bone is not real.
That is what caught many of the Trump voters. Elisabeth Parker lays it out well in her article titled “Trump Voters In Coal Country Worried They’ve Voted Away Their Health Care.”
Contrary to what many of us liberals think, Trump voters in coal country aren’t dumb. They know they’re screwed without healthcare, they know they get it through Obamacare, and they know the GOP is champing at the bit to repeal it.
So why the hell did so many of them vote for Donald Trump? Because he said what Hillary Clinton won’t (and can’t without lying). He promised to bring their lost coal mining jobs back. And when push comes to shove, coal country voters don’t want Obamacare. They want well-paying jobs with healthcare, paid vacation, and all those other great benefits so many of us don’t get anymore.
But we all know they aren’t getting their coal jobs back. And with a completely Republican-dominated federal government, they are apt to lose their health care as well.
Paul Krugman explains the Republican pathology that allows them to put Americans’ lives at risk. And of course, it has to do with tax cuts to for the rich. He points out that it is working and that this year was a likely one-time adjustment in pricing.
To appreciate the good news about Obamacare you need to understand where the earlier bad news came from. Premiums on the exchanges, the insurance marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, did indeed rise sharply this year, because insurers were losing money. But this wasn’t because of a surge in overall medical costs, which have risen much more slowly since the act was passed than they did before. It reflected, instead, the mix of people signing up — fewer healthy, low-cost people than expected, more people with chronic health issues.
The question was whether this was a one-time adjustment or the start of a “death spiral,” in which higher premiums would drive healthy Americans out of the market, further worsening the mix, leading to even higher premiums, and so on.
And the answer is that it looks like a one-shot affair.
Krugman then explains why Republicans must repeal the law and act quickly.
Republican congressional leaders like Paul Ryan nonetheless seem eager to push ahead with repeal. In fact, they seem to be in a great rush, probably because they’re afraid that if they don’t unravel health reform in the very first weeks of the Trump era, rank-and-file members of Congress will start hearing from constituents who really, really don’t want to lose their insurance.
Why do the Republicans hate health reform? Some of the answer is that Obamacare was paid for in part with taxes on the wealthy, who will reap a huge windfall if it’s repealed, even as many middle-income families face tax hikes.
More broadly, Obamacare must die precisely because it’s working, showing that government action really can improve people’s lives — a truth they don’t want anyone to know.
Sadly, like most of us know, Krugman understands that Republican will then use the media to blame the pain and dislocation on Obamacare even as all the numbers show it working albeit with some hiccups because it is not a single-payer health care system.
I wrote the following in my article “Obamacare repeal: GOP plot to give your savings to the 1%.”
Obamacare repeal does not only affect those using the Obamacare exchanges. It affects absolutely everyone. Health insurance isn’t like buying a car where you can shop around for the best price on a model, choose a cheaper model, or choose none at all given that one has public transportation. When one needs health care, they have one option, get health care.
Americans better get ready to fight or yet again the poor and the middle-class will be pilfered, denying them any access to financial independence or success. There is no choice.
I hope the message is heeded and we start our fight right after the New Year.