EDITORIAL: New Trumpcare is just lipstick on a pig | Editorial
As most people know, it doesn't make the pig pretty.
The cosmetics that the
Gone are some, but not all, of the tax cuts that would have drained the Medicare Part A trust fund two years sooner. There is more money for subsidies and to fight opioid addiction. People who have money to put aside in tax-exempt health savings plans could use it them to pay insurance premiums.
But Trumpcare -- or McConnellcare if you prefer -- still scraps the core provision of Obamacare, the requirement that everyone who can afford it must have health insurance or pay a tax. With fewer healthy people -- those who are most likely to skip out -- it will cost more to insure everyone else.
In its place, McConnell adopts one of
Polls show the public, including most men, strongly opposed to this. But
Allowing the sale of inadequate policies has malicious consequences. It tempts some to buy coverage that will fail them in the event of serious or costly injury or illness. It's also a sly way of denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and allowing them to be dropped when they're sick. Policies might still be available, but few could afford them with young and healthy people no longer in the mix.
Worst of all, McConnell continues to use the
Instead of the present stated percentage match to what states are willing to spend for covered services, payments to states would be fixed on a per capita basis and indexed for growth at less than the actual rate of inflation in the economy's health care sector.
So states would get the onus of cutting services. But to whom?
* To the 1.8 million
* To the more than 350,000 Floridians who are battling mental illness and/or substance abuse with support from Medicaid that they could find nowhere else?
* To low-income Medicare patients in nursing homes, of whom two out of three are subsidized all or in part by Medicaid?
McConnell is said to be trying to beguile skeptical
That's snake oil. Put off the consequences so that those responsible won't have to account for them. In the meantime, perhaps, divert the Medicaid "savings" to tax cuts for McConnell's true constituency, the one percent.
We have yet to hear from the
The actual numbers, dreadful as they may still be, are almost beside the point.
A Republican congressman from
McConnell's pig is nowhere near pretty. It's repulsively ugly, and whatever lipstick they might slap on in floor debate can't make it any less so. The only responsible vote for
Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor
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