Health care users share fears about GOP plan
At 61, Marshall Stern is 10 months into a new life, thanks to a heart transplant and $100,000 a year in medications that Medicaid and Medicare help pay for. But if the GOP-backed health care plan passes, Stern told reporters Monday, he fears the government will no longer cover the drugs keeping him alive.
“It’s as good as saying I die,” said Stern, who lives in Kissimmee, speaking at a news conference called by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, a Democrat. “I feel like … Republicans don’t have to look people in the eye and say, ‘You have to die because I don’t believe in these programs.’ ”
Stern was among eight Central Florida residents who gathered in Nelson’s Orlando office to express fear and disgust about their health care coverage should the American Health Care Plan — dubbed Trumpcare — be enacted.
Nelson said the plan would not only make health insurance more expensive for older Americans, as the AARP has stated, but also cut
Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for very low-income Americans.
“Medicaid … is going to be cut to ribbons,” Nelson said. “They’re going to put a cap on the amount of money going to the states for Medicaid, and that means the states are going to have to pick up all the additional cost, and the states are simply just not going to do that.”
But the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress say the Affordable Care Act hurt job creators, increased premium costs and limited options for patients and health care providers. They say the new plan allows individuals and states greater freedoms, although some — including Sen. Marco Rubio — have also expressed concerns about the potential cuts in Medicaid.
The plan faces a vote in the House of Representatives this week.
If approved in its current form, the measure would generally lower health care costs for the young and wealthy but dramatically increase costs for Americans 50 to 64 years old who are insured through the ACA, or Obamacare. According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, a 64-year-old making $26,500 could see health care costs go from $1,700 a year to $14,600 a year under the new plan.
The increase is caused by two provisions in the House bill — one that allows insurers to charge older Americans up to five times as much as younger people, and another that caps federal tax credits meant to help people 50 and older pay for the rising cost of health insurance.
Several of the residents said Obamacare has allowed them to get insurance they could not otherwise have afforded.
Sharon Brown, a 58-year-old widow from Orlando, said for two years after her husband’s death, she relied on COBRA — a 1986 law that provides continuing coverage of group health benefits to employees and their families after employment ends. But when Obamacare passed, the lifelong Republican signed up. She paid higher premiums the first year, but the plan was better, and her premiums dropped in the second year, she said.
“My premium’s pretty high because I’ve got multiple medical conditions that make it so I cannot work,” Brown said. “But I’m afraid of losing this. I’ve done a lot of reading on this … and the cost of my health care [under the GOP plan] will be about double my income. … It’s very scary, and the anxiety that goes along with this happening right now is making it worse.”
Susanna Perkins, 63, agreed, saying she had finally been able to get health insurance through Obamacare after five years of going without. The Altamonte Springs resident had even moved with her husband to Panama for that nation’s low cost of living and cheap health care after she lost her employerprovided plan during the recession — just as her husband was finishing a master’s degree and hoping to go into teaching.
“He got his diploma just in time for Orange and Seminole [school districts] to lay off 3,000 teachers,” she said. “He finally got a job at the age of 62, riding his bicycle as a courier in downtown Orlando. It was a very dangerous job. He had three accidents … and I never knew when he left in the morning if I’d see him again at night. We blew through his IRA, and … we ended up selling everything we had, except the house, which we couldn’t sell in that market anyway.”
They only returned from Panama in 2014, when they were able to get coverage through the insurance exchange set up under the ACA.
“If they shred [the current plan] like they’re supposed to, we’re going to be hightailing it out of here,” she said, “because dealing with the health care [costs] and insurance makes you sick.”
Another woman in her 50s, who asked to be identified only as Judy, said she wouldn’t be able to afford insurance. Self-insured through the ACA, she said she wasn’t happy with her premiums, but at least she could still afford them.
If the new plan passes, she said, “I’ll just run into the emergency room every time I have a cold” — a strategy that Nelson, the state’s former insurance commissioner, said would increase costs for those who do have insurance.
Nelson vowed to take his constituents’ stories back to Washington and testify on their behalf.
“I am going to be your voice,” he said. “It’s not right that people have to go with that nagging fear that you’re going to get sick or have an accident and you’re not going to have health care.”