Senator Susan Collins truth serum: As a senior Senate Republican she could have supported health insurance premiums. But guess what?

Republicans Are Trying to Hide These Health Care Cuts

Echo editorial opinion published in The New York Times.

One of the federal government’s great achievements this century was making health insurance affordable to millions more Americans. In 2010, nearly 18 percent of people under 65 lacked insurance. 

By 2024, the rate had fallen below 10 percent, thanks to the Affordable Care Act and later legislation that built on it.

Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are working to dismantle that achievement. They have effectively cut subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, making it harder for people who do not receive insurance through work to afford a plan. This year, the subsidy cuts led three million people to lose their health insurance. In Ohio, nearly a third of previous marketplace enrollees lost their insurance.

The situation stands to worsen next year. In addition to reducing the marketplace subsidies, Trump and congressional Republicans enacted sweeping cuts to Medicaid, which expanded under the Affordable Care Act. They will take effect after this year’s midterm elections. (Yes, that timing is deliberate.) By 2034, the combined cuts will most likely erase about half of the gains from the Affordable Care Act, causing 14 million Americans to lose insurance.

Politicians from both parties have talked up affordability in the run-up to this year’s elections. Republicans, however, are taking deliberate steps to make health care less affordable. Many middle-class and poor Americans will struggle — even more — to afford important medical care as a result.

Americans have good reasons to be disappointed in their government. Progress on health care, imperfect though it was, represented a positive counterexample of the government working to genuinely improve people’s lives. Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress are trying to ruin that success story. (Including Senator Susan Collins.)

Those health insurance cuts caused premiums and deductibles to spike this year. As an example, a middle-income, middle-aged couple with two children could see their premiums more than double, costing an additional 💲3,500 a year.

In the more direct approach to cutting health care coverage, Republicans targeted Medicaid, the program focused on the poor and disabled. Last year, the federal government enacted what Republicans call a work requirement. In reality, it is a paperwork requirement — one that forces Medicaid enrollees, most of whom are working or have a valid reason for not working, to file repeated documents proving they have a job or a valid exemption. Americans lead busy lives, and many of them may not know of the new requirement. 

About two in three enrollees who will lose health insurance should, in fact, be eligible for it, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated.

Arkansas enacted a version of this policy before the federal law passed, and it was a failure: Work force participation did not rise, and eligible people lost their insurance because of paperwork problems.

The Affordable Care Act was a triumph of government, and it is justifiably popular. Mr. Trump and other Republicans once promised to repeal the law, but they have largely stopped making such statements. Instead, they have sought to weaken the law — partly out of an ideological aversion to government, partly to finance tax cuts for the wealthy — and hope that voters do not notice.

Democrats should not let Donald Trump and Senator Susan Collins get away with this subterfuge. They should make the health insurance cuts a central piece of their midterm campaign and, as important, offer voters a vision that includes other improvements to the nation’s costly, rickety health care system, both to continue expanding access and to reduce costs. The Affordable Care Act also happens to be a model on costs; it meaningfully slowed growth in health care prices over the past decade.

Republicans in the Congress should be looking for next steps, not moving backward. The Affordable Care Act demonstrated that progress is possible.

Senator Susan Collins 😢🤥🤥 lies. She is paying millions in false campaign political ads with claims about how she supports healthcare. She lies❗ What's more, she is paying former Maine hospital association CEO Steven Michaud to lie on her behalf.  He lies 🤥 about how Senator Collins somehow magically bought money into Maine to help pay for health care services. Truth is, only people who have health insurance can access the technologies described in the fake ads and Senator Collins voted to cut insurance subsidies.