Kansas helps to strangle affordable care

0
552

The best bargaining chip in the great government shut-down impasse is not a border wall. It’s health insurance. So far, it’s unmentioned, but the smart Washington trader would offer truckloads of Trump cement and barbed wire in exchange for returning America to the Affordable Care Act – all of it, the way it was enacted in 2010.
Everyone wants health care, the affordable kind. Only the Freedom Yokels in Washington believe that a soaring concrete diaper along America’s bottom side will lead to greater “national security.”
Equitable and affordable health insurance would do wonders for national security, not to mention faith in government.
But Kansas shuffles along with the bumpkins, with five of our six federal legislators railing against the Act of affordable care as our state hacks away at it in court.
Last month a federal judge in Texas ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional; Kansas was among the 20 states that sued last February to junk it. Led by Texas and Wisconsin, our team argued that the recent federal tax cut legislation eliminated the penalty for not buying insurance, and thus erased the Act’s individual mandate. This, the judge said, left the law without constitutional footing.
The ruling, appealed by at least 16 states, is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until then the ACA will remain law; the government will subsidize soaring costs of health insurance, and 52 million Americans with pre-existing conditions – more than a quarter of non-elderly adults – will remain eligible to buy coverage. For now.
The ACA’s individual mandate required insurers to take all enrollees regardless of health status. Without it, the insurance risk pool is weighted heavily by patients with health issues, some of them expensive. Without healthy people sharing the risk, affordable care would be impossible.
If the ACA is quashed, at least 17 million people will lose their insurance immediately, according to a study by Urban Institute, a Washington research group. Tens of millions with employer-sponsored coverage face longer waiting periods for coverage or could have no coverage at all for pre-existing medical conditions; among other casualties, Medicaid would fall and adult children under age 26 would be stricken from parents’ policies.
In attacking the ACA, Kansas seems to pine for that time not long ago when only the healthiest, purest people – never sick, never injured – could buy insurance. But once treated for even common illness or injury – bad cold, a busted leg – patients were stained with a “preexisting condition.” Into the high risk (high price) pool they went; that or buy insurance that excluded coverage for certain illnesses or injuries or anything remotely linked to them.
The Kansas charge against “Obamacare”, as the ACA was christened, was first led by former Gov. Sam Brownback and sustained by his Republican allies, including Jeff Colyer, a former lieutenant governor and governor, and Attorney General Derek Schmidt. But for Sharice Davids, the new congresswoman from Kansas City, our legislators in Washington have supported efforts to dismantle the ACA.
The critics believe states should manage the matter on their own, that the federal government has overreached. Their mission continues: overturn the premise that all citizens have good health care they can afford.
How strange, that the fate of affordable care remains with those who have no real stake in it. Public officials are insured by gold-plated, government-subsidized policies; most have little notion of the cost or complexity of this issue beyond the line item in their government paycheck.
Citizens confront bleak options as Congress continues to starve the ACA and shrink its staff and its presence. There are new codes and confusing strictures for enrolling in the program; ever higher premiums for threadbare insurance and soaring co-pays and deductibles; or the “affordable” option, go cheap and hope no one is hurt or gets sick.
Thanks to Congress and the budget knives of Republicans, insurance under the ACA has become less affordable and inclusive. Those without insurance are more inclined to give up than give it a go. They only wonder how long they or their children can stay healthy, or only a little sick.
Boosting the fence row along our bottom border will do little for our “national security.” Nor will a bankrupt health care system lead to a stronger country.
Our leaders in government say they are protecting our “rights.” Maybe they are. But the next time they talk about freedom in health insurance, ask them why this liberty has turned so wicked, and at such a cruel price.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here