Tully: This health care bill is a national disgrace
Like the House bill before it, the Senate Republican health care bill threatens to harm Indiana and many of its residents.
It’s hard to understand how Senate Republicans, like House Republicans before them, can dare to call this a health care bill.
It’s the opposite. It’s a national disgrace. And Indiana’s leading Republicans — namely Gov. Eric Holcomb and Sen. Todd Young — should put their state ahead of their party and say out loud what they must already know: The Senate’s so-called health care bill is a mess that would harm Indiana and shatter the lives of many of its citizens.
The Congressional Budget Office made that clear on Monday, releasing a report that said the Senate bill “would increase the number of people who are uninsured by 22 million” between now and 2026. Lower premiums would eventually come thanks to plans with fewer coverage benefits and higher deductibles. Older people with low incomes would be hit the hardest while wealthier Americans would receive substantial tax cuts.
Winner and losers: The CBO reviews the Senate health care bill
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Indiana impact: Donnelly pushes state to explain impact of proposed Medicaid cuts
“The largest savings,” the thoroughly depressing CBO report says, “would come from reductions in outlays for Medicaid.”
America can surely do better than this. The United States Senate, once known as “the world’s most deliberative body,” can surely do better than this backroom rush job on an issue with importance surpassed by few others. This debate shouldn’t be driven by partisan loyalty or the memory of past campaign ads. It should be driven by the real-world impact it would have on Americans.
The full impact of this hurried bill can’t possibly be known at this point. But it’s clear that the bill would threaten the protection against lifetime limits on coverage and would destroy a Medicaid expansion that has dramatically reduced the level of uninsured in Indiana while also giving the state new tools to fight its horrific heroin and opioid epidemic.
“It would raise costs for families, adults and children with pre-existing conditions and disabilities, older Hoosiers and seniors,” Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., said in a statement that urged Republicans to make this debate a bipartisan one.
Sometimes the best thing to do is to just start over. Sometimes the best thing to do is admit that you’re on the wrong path and that it’s time to look for a better one. That’s the message thoughtful Republicans — and Young and Holcomb are exactly that — should be shouting from the Senate floor and the Statehouse steps after a vote on the bill was delayed until after the July 4 recess.
“Medicine has long operated under the precept of ‘first, do no harm,’” the American Medical Association said in a statement you should all read. “This draft legislation violates that standard on many levels.”
The association of doctors is worried about the loss of “important protections” for patients, huge cuts to Medicaid spending, and provisions that threaten “to limit states’ ability to address the health care of their most vulnerable citizens.” The Indiana Hospital Association, meantime, announced opposition to the bill this week because of the damage it would do to the state’s Medicaid program.
There’s a lot of chatter going on about this bill. In the end, you can listen to partisans and those who think the free market will save you every time, or you can listen to groups such as the American Cancer Society, which opposes the bill and urged its members to contact their senators this week.
“The Senate version of the health care bill could be devastating for cancer patients and survivors,” the ACS wrote, “leading to skyrocketing insurance premiums, low quality coverage or even denial of health coverage altogether.”
I almost didn’t write this column because I hoped it would be outdated before it was filed. Surely, I thought, the CBO report and the outrage it inspires will be enough to keep Senate Republicans from voting on this bill. But if that were a guarantee, then House Republicans wouldn’t have approved a similar bill this spring that even President Donald Trump has called “mean.”
As many of you know, I’ve spent the past nine months fighting cancer. It hasn’t been fun, but not many days have passed without me thinking about how lucky I am. I’m lucky because, first and foremost, I have an absolutely amazing family, as well as some great friends and a fulfilling job that allows me to work around bi-weekly chemo treatments.
But I’m also very lucky because I have a high-quality health insurance plan. It’s made a stressful situation a lot more tolerable. It’s ensured that I have access to great medical care. It’s given me the gift of being able to focus most of my attention on other things.
Everyone deserves that. And while Obamacare was far from perfect, it was at its core a health care bill. The goals were admirable: to increase the number of people who have insurance, to encourage people to buy health coverage even if they think they are invincible, and to pepper the system with protections for patients.
Republicans won big in last year’s elections. They control the White House and Congress and they have every right to craft a new health care bill. But they have failed miserably so far. They have failed at policy and they have failed to show heart. They have produced an unpopular piece of legislation that, first, would do a lot of harm.
It’s time to start over.
Thank you for reading. Please follow me at Twitter.com/matthewltully.
