One of the biggest difficulties with Obamacare is that it’s become the focus of politics at the expense of the issue that fostered its creation: The unaffordability and inability to obtain needed medical services when you’re sick in the US.
Instead, Obamacare has taken on a life of its own. We talk about SAVING Obamacare or DESTROYING Obamacare and CITIZENS have taken on the role of TOOL in helping SAVE or DESTROY Obamacare (with our money and our votes)instead of the legislation being a tool to help SAVE or DESTROY citizen health.
The upside down nature of our politics that focus on using people to SAVE or DESTROY a piece of legislation instead of using legislation to promote or destroy citizen welfare is a weird and dangerous one because who cares if you save the legislation at the expense of the citizens? Certainly not citizens.
We’ve seen this weird allegiance to the legislation at all costs produce a government class bickering over how best to preserve or destroy the law as citizens observe in amazement that our timely access to affordable healthcare services when we’re sick has remained unchanged or worsened overall.
This is not opinion or one unhappy little vignette, it’s every statistic that’s coming out. Our premiums are up. (Assuming that they’re up less than they “would have been” is a far cry from premiums going down.) Our coverage is inadequate as more and more Americans (estimated at 33 percent at the end of 2014) put off medical care because of cost. Our access to physicians is worse under the legislation as millions find providers unavailable and as the government itself finds that plans’ providers are often nonexistent (see GAO report of July 2014).
So what on earth are the Republicans doing with the SAVE AMERICAN WORKERS ACT OF 2015 that passed the House (and is not the law yet) in choosing to address the EMPLOYER MANDATE provision of Obamacare? They’re playing politics and sticking to their side of the Obamacare endgame, to weaken the law, NOT strengthen any of the interests of citizens.
The SAVE AMERICAN WORKERS ACT of 2015 is as truthful a title for legislation as the PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT, in other words, not so much. It’s more of the same garbage from Republicans regarding the failed misrepresentation of a “trickle down” theory that spits out promises that the rich employ people so protect the rich (oh, by the way, at the expense of the poor). It skips over direct policies such as preventing offshore money accounts for the rich or discouraging outsourcing and disguises their policy designed to relieve EMPLOYERS (rather than WORKERS) of the burden of having to offer employees health insurance by resorting to the same old lies of “trickle down.”
But there will be no consumer outrage because arguably, this proposed law is no more damaging than Obamacare itself to workers. After all, the employer mandate was already postponed by the government while the individual mandate was not. But this Republican proposal is disappointing because it’s a signal of business as usual by the government class filling their time with consideration of one concern, Obamacare rather than the problems with healthcare that fostered the enactment of Obamacare or the problems perpetuated or worsened by the law.
Why now? Easy. The employer mandate is in effect this year for large employers and is slated to go into effect in 2016 for smaller employers. By shrinking the number of people to whom employers will be obliged to offer health insurance, Republicans hope to get an easy score from business saving businesses money by making them have to provide health insurance options to fewer individuals, those working 40 hours or more only rather than those working 30 hours or more.
Republicans are following Democrats’ lead on this too. After all, it wasn’t until after Obama’s second election that the more draconian provisions of Affordable Care started penetrating the national consciousness. And after all, Democrats were unmoved by citizen hardship to delay the individual mandate’s effective date though arguably again, Republicans are following Democratic lead in restricting the applicability of the individual mandate by creating new exemptions much like the Republicans are seeking to restrict applicability of the employer mandate.
For consumers this law would mean that IF you work between 30 and 39 hours that you’ll have to shop for health insurance on the health exchanges…Obamacare.
But the Republicans also know that there will be more people who can obtain no health insurance who are low-wage workers in non-Medicaid expanded states who do not meet income requirements to get Obamacare. As is generally the case, the poor lose. But, in fairness, the Democrats set up the scenario for leaving the neediest Americans out of the health insurance option since mandatory expanded Medicaid was found unlawful by the Supreme Court. The Democratic solution was to EXEMPT those people from having to pay the individual mandate tax, in other words, you don’t have health insurance but you don’t pay a tax because you don’t have health insurance.
So, Republicans are merely making a problem already perpetuated by Obamacare worse (according to the Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate of January 7, 2015, H.R. 30, SAVE AMERICAN WORKERS ACT OF 2015, “Fewer than 500,000 additional people would be uninsured).
Then there are the additional people who would use the health insurance exchanges. Again, the Republicans only worsen the existing problem of government expenditures on the Obamacare entitlement class, those receiving premium payment subsidies. The CBO estimates between 500,000 to one million more people would obtain coverage through Medicaid, CHIP or exchanges.
The financial results predicted by the CBO seem neither drastic nor insurmountable if the 30 hours are changed to 40 hours in terms of Federal monies over an 11 year period. However it leaves one wondering why Republicans are trying to trick American WORKERS into thinking this is anything but another instance of prioritizing the law over citizens. Republicans want Obamacare dead but as citizens we don’t care since every action taken by the government class so far has been about fighting for or against Obamacare rather than fighting for (or against) citizen interests in an improved healthcare system that provides better access to affordable health care services in a timely fashion when we’re sick.
