“Locked” out of healthcare access

By Retirees for Single Payer Health Care, Detroit, MI

DETROIT, MI — “A long strip of deep and fertile soil pinched by sharply rising mountains, the valley has more than doubled its output of produce in recent decades and now grows well over half of America’s leaf lettuce.”
Yet one place the valley’s bounty of antioxidants does not often appear is on the tables of the migrant workers who harvest it.” (theurbanfarmers.org)
The new government that takes power on January 20, 2017 is bound and determined to destroy the “safety net”, particularly access to healthcare through Medicare and Medicaid. Those two programs alone give 131 million working class people in this country some access to healthcare. They are determined to lock us out of access to that healthcare.
In states like Vermont, Massachusetts and Alabama, so-called Affordable Care Organizations (ACOs) are forming to restrict Medicare and Medicaid recipients access to healthcare.  They are per capita medical organizations made up of hospitals, clinics, and physician practices.  Each organization is paid a fixed amount per patient.  That payment determines what medical treatments are covered and what are not.  In other words, when the patients exceed the total per capita amount either the ACO eats the cost of the medical treatment or the patients do.
Another scheme that the new government is proposing is to turn the Medicare system into a voucher system in which each recipient would receive a fixed amount of money to spend on purchasing access to healthcare in Medicare Advantage exchanges.  Better coverage comes out of the recipients’ pocket.
Medicaid would be funded by a combination of a block grant from the new government to the states and state taxes to fund the rest.  That means either the states cut Medicaid recipients or raise state taxes.
Workers with a job will be offered high co-pay, high co-insurance, and high deductible insurance from their employers.  Twenty-nine percent of workers with jobs are now in that situation and the new government will try to force the other 71% into the same situation through so-called tax credits.  The result is that their employers are cutting their wages and pocketing the money.
The new government is not on our side.
Our country is that long strip of deep and fertile soil.  We are being locked out of healthcare access just as our brothers and sisters’ tables are being stripped of the food they grow.
Our response must be to unite on the nationalization of healthcare access (meaning the government guarantees that the people get healthcare.)
The national, state and local healthcare movement must unite on H.R.676 – Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act as the first step.