The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

To The Eagle:

The statement that Obamacare is self destructing is a blatant falsehood repeated over and over again by those who hope that a lie repeated often enough will be accepted as the truth.

For the Affordable Care Act to fail your Destroyer In Chief Donald and his Republican wrecking crew must help it to fail. They are being as helpful as they can.

The Kaiser Family Foundation’s measurements of average premiums, claims, medical loss ratios, gross margins and related data states the ACA is functioning as intended to increase access to medical care and making that access affordable.

Mark Pauly, health economist at the Wharton School of U. of Penn. states Obamacare enrollment has increased eight percent for this year’s first quarter.

Recent healthcare marketplace instability such as a reduction in plan availability and premium increases is being caused by Spoiler In Chief Trump’s Republican misadministration who spitefully intend to cripple your health care since they weren’t able to kill it outright.

To hobble the ACA, TrumpInc. is threatening to withhold federal funding, delay actions required to enforce the Individual Mandate, not provide the necessary cost sharing subsidies and not enforce regulations designed to ensure proper risk distribution.

Trump’s ignoble threat to withhold these linchpins of the ACA, whether he carries it out or not, has destabalized the healthcare insurance market, causing enough uncertainty that some companies have withdrawn from the market, and others will raise their rates to cushion themselves from anticipated financial losses or just to profit from the confusion.

Why are greedy insurance companies in charge of our access to health care in the first place? These are the guys who profit most from denying service whenever possible and making the sickest pay the most for their care when they can least afford it. Who else profits more from our illness and need?

Profit is the only thing an insurance company cares about, that and minimizing their risk so they don’t have to provide the service you’ve paid for. No matter what their warm hearted advertising may claim, the very last thing they care about is you. Only your premium payment.

Administrative overhead charged by your private health insurer consumes 31 percent of your health premium dollar. For the national plan, Medicare? It’s three percent.

Is there a way we can all have health insurance for the three percent fee? You betcha! Physicians for a National Health Program, PNHP, intend for us to evolve to the next step beyond Obamacare.

PNHP states, “We propose to replace the ACA with a publicly financed national health program that would fully cover all medical, dental and elder care for all Americans while lowering costs by eliminating the profit driven health insurance industry with its massive overheads.”

Skeptical? Heard it can’t or shouldn’t be done? The PNHP website has answers for all of your questions. Fiscal and political conservatives, take note. Get the facts.

Inform yourself now. Go to pnhp.org/nhi. Whoever runs with this in earnest is going to get my vote, regardless of their party affiliation.

JB Bouchard

Puget Island