I Have a Bridge to Sell You
After
the GOP’s failure to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act with
something magically better, Trump has systematically tried to sabotage
the ACA with administrative actions. Most recently, he announced a
change in rules that permits insurance companies to sell cheaper “short
term” plans that do not provide coverage that regular ACA policies must
offer, e.g., coverage for pre-existing conditions and maternity care.
In an 8/16 op-ed piece in the Washington Post,
Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, outlined the
administration’s arguments for expanding short term policies’ current
limit to up to three years.
His argument contains a single sentence that hints consumers might be
buying a short term product with dubious benefits: “In fact, we require
more robust warnings about the limits of these plans than did . . .
Obama’s administration.” He doesn’t specifically elaborate on why
customers should be warned.
Here's why: these “cheaper” plans are cheap in the double sense: they cost less and
they are shoddy, unreliable, products that will not deliver the
promised value. Like the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have
lost their homes in increasingly common flooding disasters and found
that their home insurance didn’t cover their losses, buyers of short
term plans will learn what was behind Azar’s proclaimed “robust
warnings.”
We
now know all too well what our president and Republican politicians
like John Faso meant when they promised “universal access to quality
health care”—access, in this sense: You have the opportunity to enroll
in Trump University. Oops, it no longer exists. Sorry. No money back
guarantee. When the Democratic Party advocates universal coverage and care, it promises that your quality health care is your right.
Publishing history
Poughkeepsie Journal 8/27/18, six others
