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By David Apsey, DDS and Maureen D. Taylor, MWRO
“The moral argument that we cannot cut poor people off from healthcare to lower taxes for wealthy investors has united people across the political spectrum.”
DETROIT, MI — The USA is rapidly approaching a decision point regarding health care. There is a growing consensus among American workers across the political spectrum that we all have the right to healthcare.
The private property holders don’t want any part of this since workers are no longer needed to carry out production. Private property class interests dictate that they cut costs without regard for the deadly consequences for working class families. Tom Price, Health and Human Services secretary, has proposed policies that are estimated to cause 45,000 preventable deaths every year, up from 29,000 currently due to lack of access to health care.
The polarity has been fueled by the corporate plans to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with the American Health Care Act (AHCA) and wipe 24 million Americans off Medicaid by 2028, resulting in an 85% increase in the uninsured while cutting taxes for the wealthy by $800 billion by 2028. Medicaid is the state and federally sponsored (nationalized) health insurance program for poor and disabled people which also stabilizes hospital systems and pharmaceutical corporations. It is a lower quality plan of a two-tiered health care system. Most working people get employer insurance.
In response to the proposed Medicaid cuts, workers confronted their Representatives in “town hall” meetings all over the country to tell them what they are doing is immoral and the consequences would be clear in the 2018 midterm elections. The story was hardly covered in the media due to the explosive and unanticipated nature of this effective resistance.
The ACA was never a good plan for health care. Twenty-eight million Americans were left uninsured and although the Medicaid expansion helped approximately 15 million Americans gain insurance, premiums for private plans increased and services were reduced, leaving people with higher copays and fees. After the contentious 2016 elections, people are realizing they will have to fight for what they need. Health care promises of “better coverage and lower costs” were met with the reality of private health finance. When people are added, costs rise; to cut costs, people must be kicked out. American workers who got on Medicaid due to the ACA are not taking kindly to losing that insurance. The moral argument that we cannot cut poor people off from healthcare to lower taxes for wealthy investors has united people across the political spectrum.
Society is supposed to care for people and people are demanding healthcare whether they are working or not. Since most other industrialized nations have already implemented nationalized, single payer healthcare, they discovered that the costs are much lower than we pay in the United States. The people are healthier and insurance is no longer linked to employment. This is a political question since the USA has plenty of resources to care for everyone. We have excellent quality hospitals with empty beds, plenty of well-trained professionals, superb research and our spending is more than adequate. There is no alternative anymore to fighting forward. Demanding government nationalization of health insurance in the interests of workers’ healthcare is our marching orders. Everybody In, Nobody Out!! HR 676 – Expanded and Improved Medicare for All – is the solution.
