Over the past couple of days, President Donald J Trump has signed two executive orders that will severely undermine Obama’s Keystone bill, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare as it is more commonly known.
The first order signed on Thursday, will allow insurance companies to offer cheaper health care policies, which might sound good, but these policies will be very much barebones, i.e. little coverage and people with pre-existing conditions, like myself will more than likely be turned down for insurance coverage.
This will also undermine the healthcare marketplace as many young and healthy people will flock to the cheaper policies and away from the Affordable Care Act, which will mean insurance companies will reassess their participation in the marketplace, in many states, options are already very limited!
On Friday, Trump put the final nail in the coffin of the ACA by signing an executive order that will cancel all ACA subsidies with immediate effect, leaving millions of Americans with no way to pay their insurance premiums. The massive irony is that the people who will be affected the most are the people that live in states where Trump took victory, this includes Kansas, where I live, back in November’s general election.
The issue is that people will now not be able to afford insurance without the government subsidies, but the ACA will still be in effect, so those people will be penalized in their taxes for not having insurance. I have never agreed with Obama’s ‘individual mandate’, being forced to buy insurance or face a tax penalty, but what Trump has done is cruel, the exact opposite of what his campaign promised.
Of course, these orders came about because Trump and his Republican cronies have failed numerous times to repeal and replace Obamacare in the United States Senate, despite having the majority in both the House and Senate. The knock on effect of this Republican obsession with repealing Obamacare is that they have let funding for CHIP lapse, meaning millions of children will not have medical coverage.
From a personal perspective, this is a disaster, I received a renewal notice yesterday from BCBSKS and the premium, with the same subsidy we got in 2017 would be $439 per month, that’s up from $98 per month. Without the subsidy, the premium payment would be $1,057.39, that’s half my net income, obviously, that is not something that I can afford to pay, which leaves my wife and children uninsured.
I have medical insurance through my workplace, but to cover my wife and children on this policy would be a little over half my net income, which is how my wife and children ended up with a healthcare marketplace policy, $98 per month is better than $950 extra per month through my workplace.
The hypocrisy of Donald J Trump and the Republican party is beyond belief. Trump attacked Barrack Obama for the number of executive orders he signed throughout his tenure as president. Now, look, Trump has signed over 50 executive orders in his first nine months as president, and there is not a damn peep from the Republicans and the Democrats are too fucking weak to call out the hypocrisy.
It’s clear that we need to vote as many Republicans out of office as possible during the mid-term elections in 2018, their agenda is clear, they want to enrich their donors coffers at the expense of the people they represent. Don’t let their lip-service fool you, they agree with Trump’s actions, their words are that of a person that is seeking re-election, we cannot allow this to happen for our own self preservation.
This is not just limited to Republicans, the Democrats are just as bad, they have voted against the interests of their constituents time and time again when it comes to lowering healthcare costs, including blocking the ability to buy cheaper medication from across the border in Canada. The co-sponsoring of Bernie Sanders ‘Medicare for all’ is nothing more than lip-service, they know that the bill will not pass.
You could call me jaded and you’d be right, since moving to the US nine years ago, I have seen every day Americans be screwed over time and time again by what we laughingly call a government, big money controls congress and we have a president that is the CEO of an international business; who would have thought that he would NOT be fighting for the little person, the everyday American paying his salary.
I could go on, and on, and on about this; I don’t use the word ‘hate’ too often, but I hate Trump, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and the system that has allowed big money, be it pharma, healthcare, insurance or business conglomerates to buy politician’s votes in the senate and house. In Europe, we call this practice bribery, in the US, we call it lobbying, and money is speech, what a fucking shambles.
I wish I could defund government by not paying the $442 in state and federal taxes I do every month!
/rant over
