LOS ANGELES – As the Senate prepared to open debate on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday accused legislators of playing with people’s lives and failing to seek input from those charged with providing healthcare.
Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said healthcare was a critical focus of a meeting last weekend of the National Association of Counties.
“The healthcare debate should be about improving outcomes and not just a budget exercise,” Ridley-Thomas said, citing broad consensus among county officials nationwide, without regard to partisan politics.
If Obamacare is repealed, Congress will create “a massive cost shift … for counties to bear” and given its size, “Los Angeles County would be the county most adversely impacted,” Ridley-Thomas said, adding that the county could stand to lose as much as $1 billion in funding.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who also attended the NACO meeting and is the sole Republican on the non-partisan county board, agreed.
“It’s being done in Washington without seeking the input of the providers,” Barger said. “It’s people’s lives being played as a political pawn.”
The Senate vote to open debate on repeal was 51-50, with Vice President Mike Pence as the tie-breaker. Sen. John McCain voted yes upon his return to Washington, D.C., less than two weeks after undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor.
Republicans have long sought to repeal the healthcare law, saying it has driven the cost of healthcare premiums and deductibles up to a level that many Americans cannot afford and created insurance market imbalances that cannot be sustained.
President Donald Trump pushed Congress to fulfill its pledge to repeal the ACA in a speech Monday, calling Obamacare “disastrous” and a “nightmare.”
County officials are particularly concerned about cuts to Medicaid as a result of a repeal, saying that cuts would disproportionately affect elderly and disabled individuals and take away a critical tool in fighting the opioid epidemic nationwide.
Nearly two-thirds of 2011 Medicaid expenditures benefited disabled and elderly Americans, even though they made up less than one-fourth of the program’s enrollees, according to NACO. That data predates the roll-out of the ACA, which expanded access to Medicaid.
Though the Senate vote cleared the way for debate, it remains uncertain what bill can ultimately be passed to repeal or replace Obamacare, given the competing aims of factions within the Republican-led legislature.
–
alex says
Richard Nixon proposed the “Affordable Care Act,” back in 1974. Maybe the Republicans should step back from all the political handwringing, and see that this is the kind of plan the GOP has always wanted. Trying to cancel out a good healthcare proposal because of bias is damaging to the Republican party.
Robt says
… at least 4 Senate Republicans, bought and paid for by the hospital corporations, not to save the GOP can Republicans repeal Obamacare –
Tim Scott says
Can you try again? Not sure what you are trying to complain about here.
It is pretty funny that after seven years of chanting “repeal and replace” the Republicans are confronted with “replace with what?” and they have not the first clue.
William says
Someone said of trump for his sitting back and letting the republicans in the Senate do all the work “He just sits in the bleachers like a couple of Muppets and criticizes the Congress.”
Tim Scott says
He’s even more clueless than they are…but at least he has only been claiming otherwise for a year and a half. The congressional Republicans have been pretending that they knew how to replace the ACA for years, and we now know that they were lying the whole time.
alex says
Most people, including you, complain about this chaotic situation with healthcare.
William says
You mean the chaotic republican majority in Congress that can’t shoot straight?
I’m pretty sure there are high school student body councils with more smarts than this Congress and the trump administration.
Annette says
… another behemoth mistake, “repeal and replace” compounds the problem. Far better policy would be a free market solution, leave Obamacare intact, pull the plug on the Democrat’s ACA mandate, demand that Obamacare sink or swim on its own merit, if it can’t intrinsically gather critical mass, we stand back, allow America’s free market mechanism to call forth viable, logical alternatives and substitutes –
Tim Scott says
LOL…poke a hole in the boat and then let it “sink or swim on its own merit.”
Guess what, even Dingbat Don has figured out that providing affordable healthcare to 350 million people is challenging. (Who could have ever guessed?) The ACA is a very complex piece of legislation governing the interaction of a whole lot of moving parts, and it sort of does the job. Nothing else has been proposed that even seems like it MIGHT do the job. It’s time to quit whining and get down to the business of tuning the only mechanism that offers any chance of getting it done.
The pretense that somehow we can force the free market (see what I did there?) to cough up low premiums and low deductibles and good coverage is absurd. If you can’t grasp why the free market isn’t going to do that, here’s a clue: low premium low deductible good coverage isn’t going to be profitable, EVER.
alex says
I think differently than you do. That doesn’t make you smarter, especially when you insert LOL in most of your comments to others. I care about fellow man, and I really don’t care which political party can provide for those that need care. I don’t wish death on people like you do, and I don’t need to exercise a supremacist attitude like you do. You use social media in an attempt to tear others down, like Donald Trump does. You might profess to be a Democrat, but you have the same mean spirited mindset. You only make yourself look small when you attempt to belittle others.
Tim Scott says
Whatever. If you haven’t noticed that all the “set a good example” in the world has had no effect whatsoever on the core constituency of the Republicans you just keep on doing what you’re doing. If you ever recognize that getting things done is going to require getting your hands dirty let me know.
William says
And, what does Annette know about a free market solution in health care?
In the so-called ‘free market’ profit is the incentive. And, in health care, you increase profits by denying claims when you can, not taking on customers with pre-existing conditions, raising premiums, forcing out competition and so on.
We all pay for police and fire services whether we ever use them. What’s coming in spite of trump and co. is health care as a right. We all will pay into it just like those other services.
I don’t want to hear about the young and healthy who don’t want to pay premiums.. One motorcycle or auto accident can cost many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital bills. Then what? Who pays for that? Or, cancer. Even a few days in a hospital can run $30,000 or more for more minor treatments.
Marty says
… when last Democrats carried majority seats in our Senate and Legislature, did they fix roads, fund build-outs on infrastructure, pay down the national debt? The only thing they did do, before we tossed the bums out, Obama, Reid and Pelosi rammed a health insurance mandate down our throats, without a referendum. In the last 8 years our co-pays doubled 4 times, premiums for our eligible dependents trebled, deductibles on our employer health plans skyrocketed, we’re paying double what we were on our premiums, so that Obama’s peeps – the hoodlums, the punks, the brothas and the gangbangers – can live it up having their healthcare, free. This is supposed to be a democracy, right? I don’t remember voting on any of this stuff –
Larry Smith says
Where were you eight years ago when the Obama Administration did exactly the same thing, only far worse. Tell your liberal buddies to come up with some solutions instead of the partisan name calling game.
Tim Scott says
I was in a little place called “reality.” Apparently you weren’t.