Americans are starting to suffer from Trump's health-care sabotage

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americans-are-starting-to-suffer-from-trumps-health-care-sabotage/2018/05/06/c60fb6fa-4fb2-11e8-b725-92c89fe3ca4c_story.html

Americans are starting to suffer from Trump’s health-care sabotage
By Editorial Board | May 6 at 7:20 PM

IT IS a tribute to the resilience of the United States’ public and private institutions that, despite President Trump’s incoherent management, the country has, by many measures, continued to improve, notching its lowest unemployment rate since 2000 in the latest federal employment update. But the effects of the president’s underinformed instincts, enabled by the ideologues in his administration, are beginning to show up in some of the numbers, representing real pain that Americans are suffering for Mr. Trump’s deficient leadership.

The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation focused on health-care issues, announced last week that the rate of working-age Americans without health insurance in the group’s annual survey rose to 15.5 percent, up about three percentage points since 2016. Things are worse in the 19 holdout states, such as Virginia, that have refused to expand their Medicaid programs: The rate of uninsured working-age Americans hit 21.9 percent in those areas, up nearly six percentage points over two years. Nationally, the spike has been particularly bad at the modest end of the income scale, rising nearly five percentage points since 2016 for low-income, working-age Americans.

Obamacare critics regularly describe all problems as the inevitable result of a poorly designed law. But the numbers suggest that the critics’ sabotage efforts are to blame. After impressive declines during President Barack Obama’s second term, the fund found that the uninsured rate increased in both of the years Mr. Trump has been in office. During the campaign, Mr. Trump regularly complained that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) left too many Americans uncovered. The result of nearly a year and a half of Mr. Trump’s leadership is 4 million people added to that group.

Obamacare was never perfect. But Commonwealth Fund analysts noted that, rather than fixing the law’s problems, Republicans have done concrete things to worsen them. “These include the administration’s deep cuts in advertising and outreach during the marketplace open-enrollment periods, a shorter open enrollment period, and other actions that collectively may have left people with a general sense of confusion about the status of the law,” they wrote. “Signs point to further erosion of insurance coverage in 2019: the repeal of the individual mandate penalty included in the 2017 tax law, recent actions to increase the availability of insurance policies that don’t comply with ACA minimum benefit standards, and support for Medicaid work requirements.”

[Thekaspervote]

1. Hello Dems running for office.... this call is for you big campaign issue

[Rhiannon12866]

2. Exactly! This is an issue that affects everyone - and one Republicans are very vulnerable on.

[calimary]

3. Here again, trump and the GOP do what they falsely complain

others are doing, or doing all wrong.

[duforsure]

4. Rural area's to be hurt the most.

As fewer and fewer get to keep their health care plan from trump and republican policies implemented to take away their health care plan , or cause it to skyrocket in costs , like the ACA they are saying will increase in cost by 90% in 2-3 years from their policy changes forcing more to not have a plan. This is already starting to ripple down to the health care industry, and just this week saw one hospital announced its filing for bankruptcy. In the rural area's where there's not enough support, will continue to lose support , and they'll close, and people will lose their jobs from it. Add to that they're promoting the trash can policies again after President Obama had gotten rid of them. Their tax scam they passed will also knock off 15-20 million off of having health care, then add their reductions in Medicaid, and Medicare which will hurt people even more, and the health care places will now not have enough people left with a plan to survive especially in smaller rural area's. trumps claims of better lower costing better coverage plans were bs and lies. Just like his claims he wouldn't touch Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, when he already is trying to destroy them too.

[videohead5]

5. And they

Have already talked about cutting Medicare and Social Security to pay for their big tax cut...the Dems needs to shove this down the Republicans throats.

[appalachiablue]

6. K & R. Call this out Dems.