EDITORIAL: GOP attack on Californians’ health is most brutal yet

Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA)

Nov. 17--The GOP Senate tax plan is the most brutal attack on Californians' health care yet.

That's saying something. The last Republican attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act inspired this editorial headline: "GOP health bill writers to California: Drop dead."

The House passed its version of a tax bill Thursday with zero support from Democrats. That plan is bad enough, but the one festering in the Senate is even worse.

It is an attack on Californians and low- and middle-income citizens across the nation. Republicans are ready to sabotage Americans' health care, including Medicare for senior citizens, to deliver tax breaks to the richest Americans and the corporations they control. Including Donald Trump's.

In the Senate bill, the last-minute decision to include repealing the ACA's individual mandate to buy insurance and call it "tax reform" would cause 1.7 million Californians to lose their health insurance. That's roughly 5 percent of the population.

And it would drive up the cost of insurance premiums by at least 10 percent per year, a consequence of having fewer healthy people in the insurance market pool.

Senate Republicans know this. They also know that the damage caused to Americans' health care by ending the ACA's individual mandate is just the tip of the iceberg -- and the part getting less attention is really ugly.

The proposed tax cuts will blow a $1.5 trillion hole in the federal budget over the course of the next decade, a record that dwarfs deficits under Democratic administrations that conservatives have railed against.

To balance the budget in March, part of the GOP deal is cutting in the neighborhood of $1 trillion from Medicaid programs that provide health care to the poor -- and making a smaller but major cut to Medicare. We'll say this for Republican leaders: It takes a certain kind of political courage to go after retirees' medical care for tax breaks for corporations.

These cuts are double the amounts Republicans had proposed in previous attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

"It would be catastrophic in the extreme," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California. "Both the Senate and House tax bills would absolutely kill us in California."

Literally. When people lose access to insurance and can't afford routine preventive care as the wealthy can, they end up sicker, receive poorer treatment and often die prematurely.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has revived the myth that tax cuts for the rich will stimulate enough economic growth to offset the loss of tax revenues. But trickle down economics didn't work for President Reagan in 1981, George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 or Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback in 2012. Economic research overwhelmingly debunks the theory that billionaires will invest tax savings to create jobs. Corporate leaders have told the administration this.

The Senate, usually the more responsible body, has outdone the House with its mean-spirited plan. America needs three GOP senators with the courage to stop it.

___

Visit the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.) at www.eastbaytimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.