Paul Ryan warned us. If we return Walberg to DC, savage attacks on Medicare and Medicaid are coming.
Since Republicans took full control of the government in 2017, their goal has been destroy the Affordable Care Act. But all they’ve been able to do is uninsure Americans and drive up their premiums.
Rep. Tim Walberg voted for the version of Trumpcare that would have uninsured more than 56,000 in his district and cut close to a trillion dollars from Medicaid. Luckily, that bill was killed. Walberg than voted for a tax cut that gives each Koch brother $13,461,538.50 a week while leaving between 9,990 and 25,800 people in the 7th district uninsured by 2025.
And then there’s the premium increases for Americans who don’t get subsidies or qualify for Medicaid. The CBO predicts that the tax bill will raise premiums by 10 percent next year and that on top of the normal medical inflation of 7 percent. Add the other sabotage the Trump Administration is doing and your premiums could rise by as much as 25 percent in 2019 reaching about a 90 percent increase over the next three years, according to a study from Covered California.
Republicans have proposed one poison-pill-littered minor fix for premiums that died in the GOP Congress last week. Now they’ve started to recognize that health care could be their Achilles’ heel, especially given how Americans will find out how much their premiums are rising right around Election Day 2018. The Wall Street Journal reports:
[W]ithout the stabilization funding, many lawmakers worry they could face political blowback in the fall, when insurers announce premiums for the next year.
Let’s say there isn’t “blowback.” We know what’s coming next. Think Progress reports:
“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said, adding that health care entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid are “the big drivers of our debt.”
The “next year” Ryan was referring to is 2018, but these cuts are not likely to come months before the midterm elections, especially after Connor Lamb was able to win in a +20 Trump district by running against cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, a position Trump had taken, before he was president.
Trump has now backed trillion dollar cuts to Medicaid several times and these cuts will only be the beginning. Democrats are defending 25 seats to the GOP’s eight, 10 of them in states Trump won. Unless Democrats manage to put several dozen seats in play, Republicans could keep the House and add several seats in the Senate.
ACA repeal failed by one vote. With around 55 seats in Senate, an emboldened House and a GOP eager to cut rich people’s taxes again, we know the cuts will come. And, sadly, this is just one reason the 2018 elections are a national emergency.
Last year, Tim Walberg was asked at a town hall, “You have shown with your votes… you have shown with your votes and your comments that you want to cut Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security. Which one do you want to cut the most?”
He laughed the question off with his favorite joke about domestic abuse. But this is no lol.
Sending Tim Walberg to Washington DC when a Democratic president was their to protect your health care and retirement was one thing. Now that we know what this GOP is capable of, there’s no excuse to giving him another chance to cut the benefits we’ve spent a lifetime earning.
[Photo by the great Anne Savage.]
