US health system to go from bad to worse

THE health-care system in the US has been broken for a while and it’s not hard to see why.

Despite laying claim to some of the world’s most brilliant medical minds and magical miracle treatments, the remarkable divide between those who can and cannot afford even the most basic medical procedures has transformed the gift of good health into some sort of sick and twisted caste system.

On Thursday night, that divide got a little bigger.

It has taken seven gruelling years, but bloodthirsty conservatives were finally able to take a huge step forward in their increasingly fanatical quest to eradicate Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act after securing a rushed, paperthin majority approving the bill they think should replace it: American Health Care Act.

This is the second time Republicans have tried to push through this bill, which is a bastardised and cold-hearted version of its liberal predecessor. The Act explicitly benefits healthy, high-income people by cutting back taxes for the rich and phasing out Medicaid expansions that would have helped poor people get access to affordable health care.

It’s also designed to remove Obamacare’s much-reviled individual mandate that punishes people who don’t purchase insurance, allows states to withhold coverage to all unemployed, able-bodied adults and axes rules that prevent insurance giants turning away old people and those with pre-existing conditions.

A few bits of Obamacare, such as the provision that allows people to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until 26, are staying put. And in order to win over wary, moderate Republicans this time around, Donald Trump and his crony Paul Ryan decided to commit $8 billion worth of extra funding to help states create local hardship funds for the sickest of the sick. Even then, 20 Republican lawmakers refused to back the bill on Thursday.

Why? Because like it or not, they know a decent chunk of “grand old party” voters directly benefit from Obamacare. And if this were to get enshrined into law, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reckons it would see at least 24 million Americans lose their insurance coverage by 2026. That’s more people than Obamacare has claimed to have helped since it was signed into law in 2010.

If you think the American health care sucks now, wait until Republicans are allowed to smear their fingers all over it. Things are going to go from bad to worse pretty quickly. – The Independent