OPINION: Sunday roundup

May 28--Self-fulfilling rhetoric on health care

As President Donald Trump yodels about the Obamacare "death spiral," he may be getting his wish. The vast and expanding pool of uncertainty about the Affordable Care Act threatens to be a lead weight on its viability, producing rising rates and decreasing options for millions of low-income Americans.

The latest blow to rational health care policy came when the Trump administration asked for a second deadline extension to respond to a lawsuit filed by the GOP-led House that challenges subsidies for low-income Americans buying health insurance on Obamacare exchanges. ...

That puts the future of those subsides -- critical for the viability of the health care exchanges -- in doubt at the very moment insurers are setting rates for 2018. ...

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that without the subsidies, the cost of a midlevel plan on the exchanges will increase by 21 percent in states that did not expand Medicaid (ironically, they almost all voted for Trump). In states that expanded Medicaid, rates for that type of plan would rise 15 percent. ...

If you see a huge bump in your premiums for 2018, call it what it is: the uncertainty of Trumpcare.

The Seattle Times

Trump budget attacks the poor

It's worse than even some of President Trump's most vociferous critics could have imagined. Trump's first proposed budget was characterized as "Robin Hood in reverse" by one critic, and that's an understatement.

The presidential budget now out cuts some of America's most important programs for disadvantaged families.

Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor and disabled, would be cut by more than $600 billion over the next decade. Payments to states would be capped and the states, through their governors, would have more leeway in managing the program. ...

There is very little fraud in these assistance programs, and the Trump people know it. They are pandering to the right-wing base that put them in the White House: conjuring visions of deadbeats collecting checks and living off the hard work of other Americans. It is a despicable way to try to excuse a heartless, cruel budget clearly designed to somehow keep campaign promises no matter what. ...

Trump's budget will not stand, of course, as even Republicans in Congress will balk at food stamp cuts and the crop insurance cuts and perhaps even the cuts on the rolls of Social Security disability -- something Democrats will rightly characterize as the first GOP volley against Social Security itself. But the Republican budget likely to emerge will most certainly slap the poor and working families. But that short-term demagoguery may have long-term bad political consequences.

The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.)

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