And Obamacare is having its best week since it became law
Despite predictions that the Affordable Care Act would slow the economy, job creation has spiked to a five-year high, with an estimated 288,000 jobs created in April.
Despite predictions that it would bankrupt the country, the deficit is at a five-year low.
Despite predictions that cancellations would dull the impact of the law, America’s uninsured population has been reduced by 25 percent in just 7 months.
Despite a sleazy Republican report saying that only 69 percent of Obamacare marketplace enrollees paid for their coverage, we are finding out that the number is closer to 83 – 90 percent.
It’s almost as if five-years of Republican lies are being completely proven wrong, over and over again.
It’s enough to make a decent person shrivel with shame as Fox News desperately tries to change the subject to “#BENGHAZI!”
There are more hurdles ahead as better statistics and next year’s premiums are released. Our broken system will still have to adapt to this rapid transformation in millions of tiny ways.
But thanks to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, we can now say with near certainty that we know Obamacare will save lives and improve health because Romneycare did.
This is a law that taxes the rich and the super rich to improve the health and economic security of working people. After a disastrous launch, this working better than anything the government has done to improve the health care of its citizens since the 1960s.
And because we know this law will save lives, we also know denying it to 4.8 million working Americans, as Republicans are in 24 states, will lead to a loss of lives. The Advisory Board Company’s Tom Liu points out that 5,790 Americans could die as a result of being denied this coverage.
The states rejecting this coverage for their residents who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid will still have to pay for the coverage in the taxes for the law, higher rates in their exchanges and dead residents.
Some Republicans justify this cruelty by saying people should be ashamed to get subsidies. Every American who gets employer-provided health insurance, including millionaires, is subsidized by a huge government tax break. Are Republicans calling for higher taxes on every American who gets coverage for their insurance?
No, they’re pretending that richer working people are more deserving of breaks that poorer working people are not, hoping that the strategy of shaming the poor and “them” can help them keep America’s broken health care system wasting as much as $1 trillion a year.
The right has spent hundreds of millions of dollars demonizing this law. Even as it’s having its best week, its still unpopular — though nowhere as unpopular as repeal or the GOP.
The Republican Party is cynically betting on people — especially in the south — voting against their own interests and their own health for fear of this law creating millions of new Democratic voters.
And they’re even willing to risk thousands of American lives to do it.
NOTE: I originally wrote that 18,193 preventable deaths would occur as a result of states rejecting Medicaid expansion, making it the fifth leading cause of preventable death in America. I misread and used the number for all 50 states. Advisory Board’s Liu looked at the 4.8 million being denied expansion and figured that would translate to slightly more than 5,700 fewer deaths, using that model suggested by the new study of the live-saving effects of Romneycare.
[Photo by Anne Savage.]
