"Yes, Health Care is a Right" Tom Denton Letter to the Editor

Yes, Health Care for All Is a Right

As the Senate works on its own version of the AHCA, a more immediate threat to American’s health care looms. Donald Trump, still, refuses to commit to paying insurers cost sharing subsidies that have been part of the ACA’s framework since its inception. As he delays,
at worst insurance companies are more likely to flee the established exchanges for fear of losing money, or at best, will raise rates sharply to compensate for the lost subsidy revenue. Additionally, on May 22 the administration must declare whether it will continue to appeal a lower court ruling that challenged the ACA’s funding mechanisms. If it does not appeal, the health care system will be further disrupted. Thus, the ACA exchanges, which the Congressional Budget Office says are stabilizing, might be shoved by Trump into the chaos that its opponents have been predicting since the beginning. The President seems to think he can then blame Democrats and the ACA for the problems. Want to take a wager on that bet? Trump and Republicans now own the health care system that Americans depend on.
Despite these attacks on the ACA, a fundamental point is now settling into clarity. For seven years Republicans have promised to tear out Obamacare “root and branch.” They have not succeeded. Although the AHCA attempts to weaken ACA’s regulations and protections and is a direct assault on Medicaid, it maintains some of the ACA’s structure and promises. The Senate has bluntly said that it will write its own bill, rejecting numerous elements of the House bill that even House Republicans have publicly said and hoped will be changed. Republicans in both chambers are facing the changed reality that Americans now believe health care for all is a RIGHT. This fact is the trunk from which our country’s health care system will grow, I believe. Some Freedom Caucusers derided the AHCA as “Obamacare 2.0.” Republicans, with power in their hands but fear in their hearts, will legislate around the edges, going as far as they think they can in our new reality. They know that they can no longer offer the empty promise of “access” to health care. Americans, with the assistance of the Congressional Budget Office’s projections, are wise to that game. With an unpopular president, to say the least, Republicans are further weakened in whatever case they make to the nation for a repealed—or even reformed—ACA.
The fundamental idea--that the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are incompatible with a health care system that relies on class status, geography, and profit-making-- will eventually take us to a plan that delivers on its promises. A public option might be a next step, or it might be Medicare or Medicaid for all. The process might grind slowly. But we will get there. The people of this country will demand it.
Has Congressman Faso been asked in public if he believes health care is an American’s RIGHT?

Publishing History

Kingston Freeman 5/27
NP Times 6/1

"McConnell at the Helm" Tom Denton Letter to the Editor

McConnell at the Helm

So we’ve come to the point at which we always knew we’d arrive. It all comes down to Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate who publicly asserted that his primary goal was to make Barack Obama a one-term president; who, as President Obama was inaugurated, gathered fellow Republicans to plot a four-year legislative plan of obstruction, never mind whatever Obama proposed; who engineered the outrageous refusal to follow Constitutional practice with the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme court; and who now prepares his caucus to author its own plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Mitch McConnell, whom history will likely describe as one of the most cynical, ruthless, and effective political leaders of the modern Senate pantheon. And the central question: will he be able to keep Republican senators united in drawing a moat around their national leader, Donald Trump? On the day following Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, McConnell took the Senate floor to
dismiss calls for independent investigations of Trump campaign connections to Russian bad actors. We should trust, he implied, the Senate and House Republican-led committees charged with their own investigations.

“Trust” is not a word with much currency in our current national debates. But we can be “secure” in our understanding that Mitch McConnell will do whatever he can to preserve the power of the Republican party—the national interest be damned. If that means defending the lies of the President, ignoring his appalling ignorance of basic policy matters, looking the other way as he tears apart centuries-old American traditions and values—then so be it. We will cease to be a country ruled by law, but instead by the rules of Mitch McConnell.

Publishing History


Albany TU 5/21