Officials might kill health care — and you

There has been so much tawdry and titillating news this week you may not have noticed that people you elected took another step toward killing your health care. And perhaps indirectly ... you.

Republican attorneys general (supported by President Donald Trump) filed a lawsuit to kill the Affordable Care Act, a case heard this week by an federal appeals court in New Orleans. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich long ago joined that effort.

If the lawsuit succeeds (it may well end up at the Supreme Court) the state of Arizona, represented by Brnovich and supported by Gov. Doug Ducey and the Republican-controlled Legislature, will have put the screws to the roughly 2.8 million Arizonans with pre-existing medical conditions.

Because prohibitions against being denied health-care coverage for preexisting conditions will disappear. And that’s just the beginning.

If the lawsuit were to prevail, and Obamacare would suddenly cease to exist, more than 20 million Americans could find themselves without health insurance. Just like that.

If that were to occur, with no replacement plan in place (and there is none), people would die.

There is no way around it. Uninsured individuals with no access to medical care will fall victim to otherwise preventable or treatable illnesses.

And that isn’t the only impact. There are major provisions of Obamacare that Americans agree with. They, too, would disappear. Like allowing young people to stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26.

And reductions in Medicare costs ranging from drug coverage to premiums. Caps on out-of-pocket spending would disappear. As would prohibitions on things like lifetime limits. It goes on.

The non-partisan Economic Policy Institute says that the end of Obamacare for Arizona would result in the loss of 40,000 jobs and cost the state $3-plus billion in federal health care dollars.

A bipartisan group of economists and health-care experts, in a friendof-the-court brief said that “billions of dollars of private and public investment — impacting every corner of the American health system — have been made based on the existence of the ACA,” and that abolishing the law “would upend all of those settled expectations and throw health-care markets, and 1/5 of the economy, into chaos.”

There are Democratic attorneys general fighting to save the law.

California’s Xavier Becerra said in a statement, “Our argument is simple. The health and wellbeing of nearly every American is at risk. Health care can

mean the difference between life and death, financial stability and bankruptcy. Our families’ wellbeing should not be treated as a political football.”

For one thing — one very IMPORTANT thing — there is no replacement.

Sen. Martha McSally, while in the House, supported efforts to repeal the law and has said of the legal case that it is not her role to decide. Her spokeswoman says she favors covering those with pre-existing conditions. But they

say that, knowing how much Americans like it.

However, there is no agreed upon plan. And nothing to deal with all of the other ramifications of abolishing the law.

Not that people like Brnovich seem troubled. Well-fixed attorneys usually have decent health-care coverage.

He said of killing the law, “My hope is that Congress will step up and actually do their job. My role is to enforce the Constitution, not make policy. I did my job; it’s time for Congress to do theirs.”

As for those millions of Arizonans potentially devastated by the lawsuit, people who elected Brnovich, Ducey, Trump and other Republicans, well, they’ll be on their own.