Trumpcare, officially known as the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA), is falling apart. But to ensure its demise, we must be smart and keep the pressure on both intellectually and emotionally.
Currently, Trumpcare is failing under its own weight. Republicans are fighting among themselves, and it seems that there won’t be enough votes. NBC’s First Read enumerated the current reasons the bill is unraveling.
- Conservatives don’t think the House GOP plan goes far enough. “After reviewing this legislation and receiving the Congressional Budget Office score today, it is clear that this bill is not consistent with the repeal and replace principles for which I stand,” Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) said.
- Congressional moderates think it goes too far. “I plan to vote NO on the current #AHCA bill. As written the plan leaves too many from my #SoFla district uninsured,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) tweeted yesterday.
- The Congressional Budget Office projects 14 million fewer Americans won’t have health insurance by 2018 under the plan, and 24 million won’t have it by 2026.
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says the House bill won’t pass the Senate. “I have serious concerns about the current draft of the House bill,” he said, per the Washington Post. “As written, I do not believe the House bill would pass the Senate.”
- Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is telling House Republicans not to vote for it. “I would say to my friends in the House of Representatives with whom I serve, ‘Do not walk the plank and vote for a bill that cannot pass the Senate and then have to face the consequences of that vote,'” he said.
- A new Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows more Americans have a positive view of the current Affordable Care Act (49%) than a negative view (44%), and a slight majority of respondents are opposed to repealing the law (51%).
- And Newsmax’s Chris Ruddy, a close friend and confidante to Trump, is calling for “an upgraded Medicaid system to become the country’s blanket insurer for the uninsured” — something that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would probably embrace.
But to drive a stake into its heart, we must personalize what the enactment of this bill would mean not only to poor or lower middle-class folks on Medicaid but to middle-aged Americans, those who are on the cusp of starting their own business, and others.
The CNBC article titled “GOP health-care plan’s chilling effect on startups” should give pause to every engineer, accountant, lawyer, and many others considering going out on their own to establish new businesses. Obamacare eliminated what is commonly known as “entrepreneurship lock” which meant because of a pre-existing condition or unaffordable health insurance, one was locked into a job working for a company.
Research conducted by the Kauffman-RAND Institute for Entrepreneurship & Public Policy in 2010, prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), showed high healthcare costs created “entrepreneurship lock,” a phenomenon where employees can’t afford to start their own company because they would lose employer-provided health insurance.
Health insurance as a barrier to entrepreneurship is a subject that comes up on a regular basis in the startup community both my wife and I are now a part of. Unfortunately, the impact of the repeal on new entrepreneurs hasn’t come up at all in the debate about the Republican replacement for the ACA.
Granted, the ACA didn’t make health insurance very affordable for most new entrepreneurs, but the elimination of preexisting conditions did free some would-be entrepreneurs to leave employer-provided health insurance with the knowledge they at least had access to healthcare, even if it still wasn’t cheap.
Trumpcare hits those not old enough for Medicare in their fifties and sixties very hard. They can be charged up to five times as much as younger more profitable health insurance customers. These are people who vote and we must ensure that they know about these realities.
Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are playing with the lives of every poor and middle-class American. As MSNBC’s Ali Velshi explained, the free market simply does not work for health insurance, period. Chuck Todd recently pointed out that the new plan decimates coverage for all but mostly to the Trump voter.
Learn why Single-Payer/Medicare-For-All is our future.
Call your Senators and Congressional Representatives every day and let them know you do not want the Affordable Care Act repealed. If you do not know how to get in touch with them, click here.