COUNTERPOINT: Republicans want to make health insurance more expensive

By Christian Urrutia

InsideSources.com (TNS)

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are vigorously fighting for a world where your health care costs more, covers less and gives even greater power to private insurance companies. That is not good for you. It is not good for America. You deserve a health care system that is universal, affordable and humane — one in which families can see a doctor without fearing bankruptcy. You deserve a government that fights for you. At the center of this fight, which led to the government shutdown, is the Republican refusal to renew the Affordable Care Act subsidies. These are the supports that make health insurance possible for millions of families. If they expire, the consequences will break lives, families and communities. And more people will die. Republicans have a clear choice: end the shutdown and fund the ACA subsidies. According to the Congressional Budget Office, if Congress allows these subsidies to expire, 4.2 million Americans will lose coverage in the coming years. To take health care from millions is not just reckless, it is immoral.

The ACA subsidies lowered premiums by an average of $705 per enrollee annually, a 44 percent drop from pre-expansion levels. Without them: A 60-year-old couple making $45,000 will see their monthly premium rise from $117 to $283, a 142% increase.

A family of four earning $60,000 will pay nearly $2,700 more yearly to keep the same plan.

Insurance companies are already preparing for it. Across 20 major markets, they plan to raise rates by 15% next year if the subsidies end.

When people have coverage, they get the care they need before it becomes an emergency. After the ACA expansion, preventive visits increased because people could finally afford to see a doctor, and emergency room visits decreased because preventive care helps keep minor problems from becoming crises. That saves lives and saves money.

The affordability crisis in health care remains one of the greatest moral and economic failures of our time. Medical debt is still the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in America. Cutting these subsidies will make that burden even heavier for millions already on the edge.

If these subsidies expire, costs will rise, inequality will grow and people will die needlessly. Republicans in Congress will tell you we cannot afford to keep them. However, their silence is deafening when it comes to tax cuts for billionaires, giveaways to oil companies and subsidies for Trump’s allies. The truth is simple. We can afford this. Republicans in Congress have other priorities. What we cannot afford is another generation of Americans buried in medical debt or dying because care is out of reach. This fight is about the kind of country we want to be: one where every family can afford to see a doctor and no one goes broke from getting sick.

(Christian Urrutia, an attorney, is a Democratic candidate for Congress in New Hampshire. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.)

TNS