Memo Pad
November 15th, 2013 10:32 am
by Joe Conason
Amid the current national uproar over the
troubles of the Affordable Care Act, it is almost uplifting to hear the
deep concern expressed by politicians, pundits, lobbyists, and corporate
leaders over cancelation of existing health insurance policies. They
empathize loudly with the millions of potential victims, whose plight
infuriates these worthy observers. They fill hours of television and
pages of print with expressions of outrage.
Suddenly everyone in Washington is intensely concerned about Americans who are losing their health insurance.
The outpouring of noble sentiment would be laudable — indeed, long
overdue — if only there was any reason to believe these protestations
are sincere. Sadly, the evidence points in the opposite direction, for a
single obvious reason: Millions of people in this country have been
losing health insurance for many years, resulting in untold thousands of
serious illnesses, bankruptcies, and early deaths – but until insurance
cancelations became a political embarrassment for Barack Obama, the
usual right-wing reaction was silence. (Except for that awkward and
revealing outburst during the Republican debates of 2012, when
a live audience howled its approval for the “let him die” plan.)
For anybody who ever honestly cared about people losing their health
coverage – for instance, President Obama or his Democratic predecessor
Bill Clinton – the depressing statistical reality has long been plain.
Every day of every year, thousands of people leave the rolls of the
private insurance industry in this country, almost never voluntarily.
People often forfeit insurance after losing a job, which happened to
millions during the Great Recession. At the recession’s height, when the
Tea Party Republicans were fighting to kill Obamacare in the cradle,
more than 44,000 people were losing their health coverage every week. In
May 2009, the policy journal
Health Affairs published a projection that nearly 7 million Americans would lose coverage by the end of 2010.
People also lose insurance because their insurance company doesn’t
want to pay the cost of a grave illness (having gorged on costly
premiums for years), which has happened to many thousands more. The most
recent congressional report on the subject found that three major
insurance companies had saved at least $300 million through “rescission”
of policies held by 20,000 seriously ill clients, while their profits
mounted.
Or people lose insurance because the cost rises and they can no
longer afford it, which happens routinely to nearly half the population
at some point during every decade. A
report released by the Treasury four
years ago found that “nearly half of non-elderly Americans” had lived
without health coverage at some point between 1997 and 2006, a period of
relative prosperity and high employment.
The consequence, as everybody ought to know by now, is that
upward of 45 million Americans have gone without health insurance
at any given moment since 2007. And the further consequence is that
many of those uninsured – men, women, and children — go without needed
health care, leading to untold suffering and premature deaths for as
many as 45,000 annually, perhaps more.
But such dismal facts have never seemed to trouble the Republicans
who are screaming so loudly now about the terrible toll of Obamacare.
The perennial GOP attitude was set forth by neoconservative eminence
Bill Kristol back in 1993, when the prime objective was to kill the
nascent Clinton health plan. “There is no health care crisis,” Kristol
famously declared, and for him — then a well-paid flack in the Murdoch
empire — that was true enough.
After two decades of medical costs skyrocketing above inflation,
threatening fiscal and economic ruin, while millions went without
insurance, such smug right-wing complacency remains largely intact. The
only “health care crisis” ever feared by Republicans like Kristol is the
prospect that reform will help Americans – as
Obamacare is already doing, despite their worst efforts.
Let’s hope that the president’s team swiftly solves the inherent
problems of providing universal coverage through private insurers. It is
certainly possible, if never optimal, as Massachusetts and other states
seeking to advance that goal are already proving.
And meanwhile, let’s please have no illusions about this momentary
flurry of concern on the right over insurance lost. It would disappear
instantly and permanently — if only Obamacare could be repealed.
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr
Tags:
affordable care act,
Barack Obama,
Bill Clinton,
Congress,
health care reform,
Health Insurance,
Joe Conason,
Obamacare,
Republicans,
Tea Party,
William Kristol
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