The ACA is starting to resemble the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Robert Reich writes in his blog The Untimely Death of Long Term Health Insurance
Why, oh why, didn’t the Obama administration make life easy for itself and for Americans by choosing the simplest and most efficient system for both primary and long-term health insurance — Medicare for all?
It didn’t because it wanted to get Republican votes. It got almost none. And now the Republicans are enjoying the prospect of the law being dismembered piece by piece, starting today.
But I have to disagree with Robert Reich about the dismemberment starting today. It has been going on for a while, albeit with very little comment.
Number one, Medicaid is under long term, continual assault. CHIP which is funded through Medicaid got expanded under ACA, but it is threatened with multiple attempts to cut Medicaid funds in all budget and deficit talks which would in turn cut CHIP. Google Medicaid and CHIP and budget and you will come up with tons of stories from different states worried that they will have to cut CHIP.
I posted a few days ago about the Community Health Centers that we were all so happy about in the ACA got cuts in the budget compromise in March:Smoke and Mirrors: Federal Dollars Evaporate Before Hitting the Street
(sidetrack - that Diary "Smoke and Mirrors" got almost no comments. I thought it was important stuff and I was very happy to see that at one point it was queued up for Community Spotlight and then it was un-queued and never appeared! I have to admit my feelings were a little hurt. I felt like I had been asked to the Homecoming Dance and then the invite was rescinded. Was it something I said? )
Here we find that 250 million allocated in ACA for Community Health center expansion somehow downsized into 29 million to cover current expenses as a result of the March budget compromise.
And now we have the CLASS program of the ACA quietly slipping down the drain because it can't fund itself adequately.
See the trend? We get something in ACA and we lose it in budget or deficit talks. I refer to this syndrome as the Left Hand Gives, the Right Hand Takes Away. At some point, this practice of gutting and dismemberment of ACA, like the Black Knight, becomes more than a flesh wound and becomes actually mortal.
I share the Robert Reich's trait of hand-wringing and be-moaning the track the Obama administration and the Dems went down for HCR because we are now reaping the highly predictable results of the path they took. They tried to create an unnatural love child of 2 diametrically opposing economic forces - providing REAL health coverage for all citizens while bowing under to deficit mongering and austerity pushers at the same time. Can't. Be. Done.
Chop. Chop. Chop.