rainbow-colored stickers

Another day closer to the inauguration, another round of unicorns farting fairy dust.  Before I begin my renewed vomit-fest over all that is happening in this dumpster-set-on-fire country, I have a little story to tell. 

Before the election, like literally three weeks prior, I had a loved one, my aunt, a white woman in her 70s, well-to-do and very educated (smart as smart can be), tell me definitively that she was voting for Trump (our relationship, which was finally back to being close and amicable after a few years of estrangement, has since gone to shit all over again – yay, MAGA!).   Not only did she announce that she was willingly voting for a sexual predator and a con man, but she went so far as to warn me, “Obamacare premiums are going up!  Aren’t you worried about your Obamacare premiums?!!”   

Did I mention that she’s very smart?  Yet, she knew (and likely still doesn’t know) diddly squat about what Obamacare actually is.  I’ve already written about the Affordable Care Act and linked to its website on this blog, so I’m not going to further provide Obamacare 101 facts.  Really, what my point is for telling this story - if my loved one, in all of her smarty-smartness, is too lazy to actually research and try to understand all about the ACA (coined Obamacare by the Republicans with a very specific and effective end goal in mind), then you can imagine how much the actual stupids in this country really don’t know shit from pudding about it.

Which leads me to a hardy round of evil, maniacal laughter, and hand rubbing a la Paul Ryan and the rest of the Republicans in Congress.  They are absolutely thrilled that my aunt was as ignorant about the ACA as the rest of the stupids.  This just means, they got her vote in their direction. Now, they’re in power and their number one most cherished, urgent priority is to demolish the law and all that it does for the American people – a majority of whom don't realize how it benefits them and their families.  

So, here comes the farting unicorns parade part!  Paul Ryan stood on stage at his Town Hall last night and claimed that the ACA is DOA - put a nail in its coffin!  He repeated his harsh criticisms of the law (which no doubt needs repair) and then promised everyone that the Republicans are going to “rescue” all of us from it by repealing it and replacing it with...spit, fairy dust, and a pack of rainbow-colored stickers intended entirely for those Americans with life-threatening illnesses who won’t be able to afford nor be eligible for health insurance/healthcare in the future to stick on their foreheads for shits-and-giggles.  (Actually, psst…with rainbow stickers on their foreheads, they'll be more easily identified by ER staff and can be sent straight to the one area in hospitals best suited for their care – the morgue.)   Why, Paul Ryan is just a good ol’ super-hero-next-door, isn’t he?

 

Only, there is this one teeny tiny problem here.  The ACA is not the super villain the GOP paints it to be.  The ACA was, in fact, originally designed to benefit millions of Americans, which in fact it has. Some will argue it was designed entirely to fail, which should lead to a larger conversation about universal healthcare, but I'm not interested in that debate at this moment.  Obamacare does serve millions and has improved the lives of millions. The parts of the ACA that are indeed failing involve other players, ones I’d argue are the real villains in all of this – insurance companies.  They’re businesses in the business of making shitloads of money for their executives.  They are not in the business of providing you healthcare.  Didn't know that, did you?  Well, let me explain. 

Healthcare providers are not really insurers.  Healthcare providers are doctors, nurses and such.  Insurers, who call themselves healthcare providers, sell you policies with insurance that should you get sick, you won't be stuck with medical bills in their entirety.  These policies then stipulate how much of a percentage of your medical bills the insurer will cover (ever compared your medical bill to your insurer's EOB? - confusing as fuck, right?).  Insurers really don’t want to pay for your medical care costs.  Instead, they are banking on you not getting sick, at least not to the tune of thousands of dollars.  This was part of what was supposed to work about the ACA.  It mandated that everyone, even the youngins who rarely need medical care or the insurance "in case they do" (except for catastrophic coverage), must buy healthcare insurance.  By mandating that healthy folks must pay into the system, it was supposed to fill the pool with the funds necessary to pay for the folks needing expensive healthcare. (Yes, I know that the ACA wasn't entirely successful in getting healthy folks to sign up since the mandate fine was too low, but that is something that can and should be fixed.)  

This has always been the guise of capitalistic healthcare. Only in the past, the youngins often opted out of purchasing health insurance and instead winged it, meaning that costs of insurance premiums were quite high.  If you were lucky enough to be eligible for employer-provided health plans, then you could afford the premiums a little better than others.  But if you were unemployed, ineligible for healthcare plans through an employer, or you had a pre-existing condition, you were shit out of luck.  The ACA fixed this for lots - as in millions - of S.O.L. Americans.  Many of them were finally able to afford health insurance.  Plus, if they were poor enough, they received subsidies to help them pay for their policy premiums. 

Oh, America, we know that some of you hated the ACA because suddenly your health insurance costs went up.  That's not fair and no one will argue it is unless you are truly wealthy, in which case shut your trap and try to be a little Jesus-y for once.  But if you are a struggling business owner, you were hit hard.  And here is where the ACA sucks and needed/needs to be fixed.  However, if we just nix it to make all of you folks who are pissing venom at Obama happy, then possibly thousands of other Americans could literally end up dead.  Plus, as memory serves, in the good ol' days when Obamacare didn't exist, all those ailing Americans used emergency rooms as their personal healthcare clinics, driving up your healthcare costs.  Remember that?  No?  Well, you're about to be reminded in real time if Paul Ryan and the GOP get their way.

Something else that isn't being discussed and what most people don’t know is that insurance nowadays isn’t even paid from a pool of insured healthy Americans like it used to be.  Most medical costs are covered by large employers.  Take me for example.  When I go to the doctor, I pay a mere copay while my company pays the majority of the bill with some of the costs covered by the insurer whose plan I chose.  I also pay a monthly premium.  Although, my premiums went down in the last five years, medical costs have consistently increased.  Contrary to what the Republicans want us to believe, costs of healthcare is rising regardless of, not because of, Obamacare.  You, Americans, have been swindled and soon will be just as screwed - especially, specifically, those of you who voted for Trump out of anger over Obamacare.  Bend over.  

Lastly, something that got lost in the shit show shuffle of late is that Obamacare is more successful in blue states.  It’s within red states, lead by the Republicans with their all-farts and no-action plans, that ACA is failing the most.   Exchanges were never created in some of these states and parts of the law were stuck in a never-ending loop of court challenges.  I don’t pretend to understand it all and I do believe it needs fixing.  But there are millions of Americans who bought health insurance plans through the ACA exchanges now heavily relying on it for continuing, future care for themselves and their families.  And a pretty sizable chunk of them are children.  Repealing and replacing the ACA isn’t something anyone should do with the kind of cavalier swiftness Paul Ryan champions.  

The GOP has had over six years to come up with a replacement.  They didn’t lift a finger.  Now, in the 11th hour, Americans should just trust them to magically devise an improved healthcare system?  Oh, my friends, you are in for a real shock.  And that means ALL of us, not just those whose lives depend on the health insurance plans they acquired through the ACA. Like these folks, ones who bought into Trump’s biggest lie, that he’d bring jobs back to coal country.  

As furious as I am at these people for voting against their own best interests and for reasons that boggle the mind, my heart just isn’t hardened and black enough to feel any joy over their impending demise.  People will die because of what the Republicans and Trump are about to do to this country.  And yet, these very same people marched themselves and their loved ones to the cliff's edge.

From a very sobering Washington Post article:   

Among those she found was Trump voter Debbie Mills, a store owner whose husband awaits a lifesaving liver transplant; they got insurance through Obamacare, and Mills is hoping the law won’t be repealed.

 "I don’t know what we’ll do if it does go away,” Mills said. “I guess I thought that, you know, [Trump] would not do this. That they would not do this, would not take the insurance away. Knowing that it’s affecting so many people’s lives. I mean, what are you to do then if you cannot . . . purchase, cannot pay for the insurance?”

Mills, who supported Trump for other reasons, figured Obamacare repeal was just talk. “I guess we really didn’t think about that, that he was going to cancel that or change that or take it away,” she said. “I guess I always just thought that it would be there. I was thinking that once it was made into a law that it could not be changed.”

Others who didn’t take Trump literally may soon face the same dilemma. The Urban Institute estimated this month that under the partial repeal plan previously passed by Republicans in Congress, 30 million people would lose insurance, 82 percent of them would be in working families and 56 percent would be white. Among adults who would lose insurance, 80 percent don’t have college degrees.

“The people hit the hardest are a lot of the demographics that went heavily for Trump,” observes Bob Greenstein, who runs the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal number-crunching group.

I still love my aunt, but I will never be able to discuss this with her again.  I know that I would say some very hateful but honest words to her and it isn’t worth it.  The damage is done.  She and others voted for this crisis no matter their denial.  The worry and misunderstanding (utter ignorance) about Obamacare and those rising premiums was exactly what the Republicans had hoped would help get Trump elected and them back in power, complete power.  It did, spectacularly in fact.  The future death of Americans denied medical care will always be the Trump voters’ cross to bear. 

The unicorns and I will simply weep.