GOP HEALTH CARE PLAN
Debating Obamacare replacement
Re: “Millions to lose coverage,” March 14 news story.
The irony is profound: The party predicting that the Affordable Care Act portended dire consequences for the elderly, including the creation of “death panels” to determine who was fit to receive health care, has created a replacement plan that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would result in millions of older Americans losing their health insurance.
When candidate Donald Trump promised to “repeal Obamacare and replace it with something much better,” he apparently meant better for those currently atop the economic scale. The Republican plan advanced by House Speaker Paul Ryan features a massive tax cut for corporations and the nation’s wealthiest individuals.
However, the proposed plan does contain a modicum of efficiency: Why resort to death panels when the process can be accomplished with the passage of a single piece of legislation? Frank Tapy, Denver
The Congressional Budget Office evaluation of the proposed Obamacare replacement gave liberals yet another excuse to demonize Republicans. All the stories scream that 14 million Americans will lose their health care in the next year. A truthful story would proclaim that 14 million Americans will now have the choice of selecting an affordable plan which will cover their needs or will choose to live without expensive, mandatory and unusable insurance. Vern Andrews, Aurora What is missed in the Congressional Budget Office report on Trumpcare is the cost of the 24 million additional uninsured (over the next decade) on your own medical bills. The one “positive” of Trumpcare in this report is a $337 billion savings over a decade, which sounds like a lot but averages to only $140 per month in lost insurance for these people.
Compare this to 24 million more folks once again flooding emergency rooms for primary care and the costs being passed on to you when bills go unpaid.
Unless America returns to the days of Charles Dickens and is willing to turn people away at the ER door saying, “If they would rather die, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population,” the ideal of marketbased health care without a coverage mandate is a false economy, folks. David Sage, Parker Re: “Political karma for Gardner,” March 12 editorial.
My compliments on maintaining a dispassionate tone in your editorial about Sen. Cory Gardner and the American Health Care Act. It’s important to remember, as the bill works its way through Congress, particularly the Senate, that it will come out of the sausage grinder with substantial amendments from both sides of the aisle.
I hold optimism the changes will both improve the legislation and mostly satisfy critics from all sides. Not every concern of every individual will be assuaged. In the final analysis, compromise will be important to success in bringing meaningful reform.
Also, without a doubt, subsequent legislation will be needed to bring further improvements particularly with regard to tackling the unsustainable cost of health care — which is currently 20 percent of GDP — in America. Dick Allison, Montrose
The Republicans’ Obamacare replacement plan eliminates the employer and individual mandates and eviscerates Medicaid, while still requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions. This is the new, unfunded mandate: on doctors and hospitals, obligated to treat patients no longer covered by employer sponsored health insurance or Medicaid, and on insurance companies, losing healthy paying customers from their risk pools.
The federal government will no longer punish you for being uninsured; instead it will be the insurance company. Those who can afford the new 30 percent late enrollment penalty for individual plans will wait until they really need it to enroll. Those who can’t will show up at the ER for the most expensive care possible. Insurers and medical providers will shift the cost of uncompensated care to everyone else. Hard to see how this is going to reduce costs and increase choice. Michael D. Whalen, Denver
As I understand Paul Ryan, the Republican health care plan is not intended to provide universal health care coverage, but instead respect each American’s individual right to have health insurance or not.
My question is for all of us, as a society: When an individual who has made the decision to not carry health insurance is subsequently seriously injured or diagnosed with cancer, how is that treatment provided and paid for? Will we be content to leave car accident victims in the street because they neglected to buy or could not afford to purchase insurance? Will we allow children to suffer because their parents don’t have insurance? How will we as a people face these consequences? What will it say about our humanity? Maureen Wirth, Aurora