We should be improving our health care system, not uninsuring those who need coverage most
Because of the ACA sabotage from Trump’s GOP, more than 100,000 Michigan residents are about to see additional health insurance rate hikes of around $432 a year, according to new figures from ACASignups.net’s Charles Gaba. Charles estimates this will screw his family out of $1,300 in 2019 alone.
What are Michigan’s Republicans doing about this? Nothing.
Instead they’re attempting to weaken our fragile health care system with an attack on Medicaid that’s even more brutal than what we’ve seen in Kentucky because it goes after parents.
Michigan Senate’s “Competitiveness” Committee is expected to hold a hearing next week on SB 897. This bill would impose a work requirement on around 1 million adult Michiganders with Medicaid health coverage.
Work requirements are the GOP’s obsession right now because it speaks to the conservative philosophy that the poor must be lazy and corrupt — even though most people on Medicaid ALREADY work and do so for wages and benefits that are so depressed they can’t afford coverage. This is happening despite Donald Trump doing his very best to prove that the lazy and corrupt stereotype is far more true of overgrown rich kids, who are being flooded with unnecessary tax cuts.
Some clarity: The people who would be hurt by SB 897 are some of the hardest working and most afflicted Michiganders you could ever meet.
The people who would be most likely not be able to meet the 116 hour a month work requirement are not lounging at Maralago or spending their executive time watching the same episode of Fox and Friends nine times. They’re caregivers for kids or family members who are sick or disabled. They’re students. Or they have an illness or disability that keeps them from working; three quarters of non-working Medicaid expansion enrollees in Michigan have a serious physical or mental health condition.
Some more clarity: Insuring them saves us all money.
A University of Michigan study found that expanding Medicaid resulted in a 57 percent decrease in uncompensated care. Between the increased costs for hospitals and the other programs this bill mandates, the cost to taxpayers could reach tens of millions of dollars — all to corrupt a health care program that was meant to make it easier for Americans to work, not to punish them.
I repeat: Medicaid already helps Michiganders find jobs, keep them and get better jobs.
MEDICAID ALREADY DOES WHAT REPUBLICANS SAY THEY WANT IT TO DO.
Here’s what you can do:
1. Send a note to your representatives now encouraging them to oppose this attack. This takes 18 seconds. Count it.
2. Share this and get others in on this effort.
Republicans have picked this fight because they’re bullies. They know the people this hurts most generally don’t have the time or resources to fight back. And that’s why we’re depending on the people who have the ability to raise their voice before this becomes law.
Thanks.
