OBAMACARE AND THE CORONAVIRUS
Elected officials make policy decisions. You might agree or disagree with them, but the reasoning behind it should make sense to you. Occasionally, a politician makes a decision that defies logic.
America is now the epicenter of the coronavirus. The aggressive social distancing measures that will help stop its infectious spread are destroying the economy. The U.S. Department of Labor reported 701,000 jobs lost in March. The number will only grow in April.
When people get laid off or furloughed, they lose their employer-based health insurance, or the income used to pay for coverage on the open market. While this development is incredibly frustrating for single people, for parents with school-age children the impact is more devastating. Between vaccine shots, still developing immune systems that are vulnerable to illness, and accidents borne out of the mix of boundless energy and physical activities, children wind up going to the doctors more than adults. Without insurance that is a scary financial proposition for parents.
We are experiencing the worse health crisis since the 1918 Spanish Flu. Therefore, the chances of winding up in a medical facility are greater than ever, while the cost of care without insurance is more expensive than ever.
Fortunately, we have Obamacare, a government-run health insurance program that can alleviate the coverage problem. But that’s where the premise of this blog – a politician making a decision that defies logic – comes into play.
The opening paragraphs of a Politico article called “How Trump surprised his own team by ruling out Obamacare” sum up the problem:
As coronavirus ran rampant and record jobless numbers piled up, the nation’s health insurers last week readied for a major announcement: The Trump administration was reopening Obamacare to millions of newly uninsured Americans.
It was an announcement that never came.
The White House instead rejected the prospect of allowing new sign-ups across the 38 Affordable Care Act marketplaces it controls – a decision that shocked the health care industry, triggered widespread criticism and prompted a scramble within the administration to find a new way to care for the growing population left exposed to the pandemic.
It’s also one that allowed Trump to sidestep an awkward reckoning with the Affordable Care Act that he’s long vowed to kill, and the health care program bearing the name of his Democratic predecessor. The president personally opposed reopening the Obamacare marketplaces when presented with the option, one person familiar with the decision said – prompting the creation of a new initiative that federal officials are now rushing to construct.
“You have a perfectly good answer in front of you, and instead you’re going to make another one up,” said one Republican close to the administration. “It’s purely ideological.”
The National Children’s Campaign thinks President Trump’s misguided approach this way: Imagine discovering your house is on fire. There is a fire extinguisher nearby, but you ignore it because it belongs to someone you despise. Instead you put out the fire with other tools that take longer to find and aren’t as effective. Obamacare is the fire extinguisher; the other tools are the new initiative that is being created.
At Trump’s coronavirus press briefing on March 27th he announced hospitals would be paid directly for the cost of uninsured patient visits, “on the condition that providers also not stick those people with separate charges.” This is what squeezing a square peg into a round hole looks like on the policy front, here’s why:
“The announcement comes with fresh questions about how smoothly the administration can run the payment process in the middle of an all-consuming crisis, how much of the $100 billion fund already earmarked for hospitals it will consume and how expansive the coverage for the uninsured will be.”
We will officially defeat the coronavirus after discovering effective treatments and developing a vaccine. However, the journey to that outcome would be made easier if the President made the right policy decisions along the way.