Indivisible: M.D. not impressed by health care bills

Tahlequah Daily Press (OK)

June 29--A medical doctor told a group of area residents Wednesday evening that health care bills percolating in Congress may be worse than the "Obamacare" it's designed to replace.

With the U.S. Senate trying to bring its version of the Obamacare overhaul to a vote, many Americans are voicing apprehension. Polls indicate the Senate's "Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017" is no more popular than the American Health Care Act rolled out by the U.S. House of Representatives in May -- each gets about 17 percent approval.

Meanwhile, for the first time since the introduction of the Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare," polls indicate majority approval -- 51 percent -- of the health care bill Republicans are trying to "repeal and replace" through the budget reconciliation process.

On Wednesday, Thomas Riggs, M.D., was invited by Indivisible Cherokee County to contrast facets of the health care acts, and like most of the two dozen in attendance at the Northeastern State University Jazz Lab, he was not impressed with the GOP offerings.

"Currently, our health care costs about $3.2 trillion [per year]," Riggs said. "That's a lot of money. It has been increasing five times as fast as our [gross domestic product]."

Riggs said either Republican plan is expected to result in tens of millions of Americans losing their health insurance, and that the legislation hurts the poor and middle class, while benefitting the top 1 percent of earners with a multibillion-dollar tax cut over several years.

"With 'Trumpcare,' there are yearly and lifetime limits to coverage," Riggs said. "Obamacare doesn't allow those limits. Under Obamacare, you cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, and called for expansion of Medicaid. Trumpcare calls for a reduction in Medicaid spending of 25 percent by 2026. The Senate bill goes even farther than that."

The doctor said Medicaid is a bigger program than Medicare.

"Some people say people on Medicaid should be out working, but who is on Medicaid?" Riggs asked. "There's pregnant women, children, people on Social Security disability, there are elderly who have gone through all their income and need to go into a nursing home. Those are the people we are going to cut."

Riggs said the Affordable Care Act had problems -- particularly not addressing rising costs in other health care sectors -- but that much of the Republican criticism is unfounded. Despite the politicization of the health care issue, he said he remains optimistic about improvement of health care coverage, and that the U.S may end up with a European-style single-payer system sooner rather than later.

"American health care has always been a social system," he said. "The economy and technology will force more changes in our delivery system.... The better idea is probably to go to a single-payer system -- Medicare for all. One of the last to flip to a one-payer system was Taiwan in 1995. Asked how they did it, they said, 'We looked at everything [the U.S.] was doing wrong and we decided to do it right.'"

Riggs took questions from the audience after his presentation. Indivisible Cherokee County followed with a "Candlelight Vigil for Life" in Norris Park, and urged residents to contact Oklahoma Sens. Jim Inhofe and James Lankford to oppose the bill.

Republicans hoped for a BRCA vote this week, but are now applying the brakes, as at least five GOP senators have indicated they will not support the bill for different reasons.

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