Senate Republicans Kill ACA Subsidies Bill, Don't Care Whether You Live Or Die As Long As You Don't Have An Abortion
They tried to pass their own bill, which was not very good or helpful.
On Thursday, all Democrats and four Republicans — Susan Collins (Maine), Josh Hawley (Missouri), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Dan Sullivan (Also Alaska) — voted to extend the ACA subsidies for another three years.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. They needed 60 votes and they did not come close. And now everyone there must live with the knowledge that they were in a room with Josh Hawley and Josh Hawley was not the worst person in that room. That should never be the case for any room, ever, but here we are.
Now, 24 million Americans are going to see their monthly premiums double or even triple (or more), to amounts they absolutely cannot afford — meaning that many, if not most of them will be uninsured. Isn’t that nice?
To be fair, Republicans did have their own plan, which also failed, mostly on party lines.
The plan was to give Americans making under 700 percent of the poverty line $1500 — A YEAR — to spend on health care, as long as they don’t spend it on anything Republicans don’t like. Like abortion or gender affirmation care. It is not remotely clear how they thought this would help people who literally cannot afford to pay their premiums without the subsidies, unless this “plan” was for them to give up having health insurance entirely and just use that $1500 to pay out of pocket for services. What could possibly go wrong, except everything?
Trump has previously said that this is the only kind of “healthcare plan” he would approve.
This is, actually, a major gift to the insurance companies, because it would mean that the vast majority of those people would continue to pay insurance companies every month, while still paying out of pocket for most things and never see a return on their investment unless something really bad happens to them (and, even then, not much of one).
It is, for the obvious reasons, not a very good plan!
While we dream of free-at-the-point-of-service healthcare for all funded by tax dollars, they dream of widely available catastrophic health care plans — lower cost high deductible plans that really only cover anything in the event of a serious accident or illness — paired with the aforementioned HSAs.
Although higher deductibles have become the norm even for those with employer plans, catastrophic plans are not allowed except in very specific circumstances.
However, even these premium/high deductible plus an HSA plans don’t always work out so well for everyone. This week, NPR reported the story of Sarah Monroe, who went from earning a six-figure income to having mountains of debt when she became seriously ill after giving birth.
Via NPR:
Although Monroe had a health savings account paired with her high-deductible plan, she was never able to save more than a few thousand dollars, she said. That wasn’t nearly enough to cover the big bills when her twins were born and when she got really ill.
“It’s impossible, I will tell you, impossible to pay medical bills,” she said.There was another problem with her high-deductible plan. Although these plans are supposed to encourage patients to shop around for medical care to find the lowest prices, Monroe found this impractical when she had a complex pregnancy and heart troubles.
Instead, Monroe chose the largest health system in her area.
“I went with that one as far as medical risk,” she said. “If anything were to happen, I could then be transferred within that system.”
That whole “shopping around” thing is what Republicans think is so fabulous about their plan.
“A patient makes the decision,” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, he who knew better and stuck us all with RFK Jr., said at a recent hearing. “It empowers the patient to lower the cost.”
Ooh! It empowers us! How exciting! So cool to feel so very powerful, spending hours trying to figure out the health insurance plan that will fuck us the least.
Bargain hunting is a great plan if you are looking to buy a new pair of shoes or a new couch or what have you. No one loves a bargain like I do, I’ll tell you that much. But it is not a great plan for everything, health care plans in particular. I’ve seen Republicans online take this shit even further by suggesting that people should be given price options of various hospitals while actually in an ambulance. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but that’s not a decision most people want to make whilst they are being resuscitated.
Indeed, I don’t think anyone in the entire world has ever thought to themselves, “Gee, if only my health care decisions were even more complicated! I’d feel so much more empowered!”
If Bill Cassidy wants me to bargain hunt, he is free to give me a Marshalls Savings Account any time he likes. But when it comes to healthcare, it’s not the way.
I mean, really — one of the best things about single payer is all the shit we would no longer have to think about or stress about. Just think of how nice and pleasant that would be.
Saving money is great. Health care is great. But “not having to think about it” is also pretty great.
This whole thing is not going to work out very well. It is going to hurt people financially and, let’s be honest here, also possibly kill them. People are going to go bankrupt and they are going to die because Republicans want to see them do more bargain hunting. And also because they prefer to spend our tax money on kidnapping brown people off the street and out of schools than on things that would actually help any of us.
House Republicans have vowed to come up with and vote on their own health care plan by the end of the year, but have already sworn that it will not involve renewing the subsidies and will instead be something just as entirely unhelpful as what Republicans in the Senate came up with. It’s clear, also, that they are not doing this because they want to help Americans afford health care, but because they are afraid of people blaming them for all of this in the midterms. It’s not that they even want to pass a bill so much as they want to be seen as having tried to pass something.
America!
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
I actually thought they would extend the subsidies. Not because it's good for America, but you extend them out past the midterms, then Dems win, then the subsidies go away and they blame the new Dem majority for that.
But they didn't, and now the blame is solely on the Republicans. How do people this bad at government get elected to office in the first place?
But American taxpayers will continue to pay for the health insurance that is offered to congress critters and senators. It must be nice to have gold-plated health insurance when so many millions of their fellow Americans will either go without or have to pay thousands more a year to have it.