OUR generation has been facing the biggest threat to our life and safety because of the coronavirus pandemic, which to date has already infected more than 178 million people around the world, killing at least 3.84 million.
The United States of America, supposedly the most powerful and richest country in the world, has not been spared with more than 33.5 million confirmed cases and claimed the lives of at least 601 thousand.
Yet even as we faced this prolonged war against the invisible enemy, the Republicans have never ceased their 10-year battle to trash the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare — the biggest legacy of the first Black President of the United States, Barack Obama.
Since Obamacare was enacted into law, the Grand Old Party (GOP) has been obsessed in repealing and replacing Obamacare, without offering anything to replace it, despite more than a decade of promising to deliver a better healthcare program for the American people.
Such obsession resulted in three cases that went all the way to the Supreme Court. However, on Thursday, June 17, the highest court upheld the Affordable Care Act in a vote of 7 judges to two judges.
As MarketWatch reported: “The now-rejected legal challenge from Texas and 17 other Republican-leaning states said the entire Obama-era statute had to fall because the mandate to take out insurance or pay a fee was unconstitutional. In 2017, Congress reduced the mandate’s fee for people without insurance to $0. Obamacare also survived two previous Supreme Court decisions in 2012 and 2015.”
If you are among the 31 million Americans who have coverage in some form or fashion under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, fear no more. Obamacare lives on with the Supreme Court decision.
According to the report, “the Urban Institute, an economic- and social-policy research organization in Washington, D.C., estimated that overturning the ACA would have left 21.1 million people uninsured, a 69% increase nationally. Those estimates are based on a projection of coverage and spending in 2022 that anticipates partial economic recovery from COVID-19”
The people who would be most affected should Obamacare fall “would be located in the states where the health-care coverage was most widely adopted per capita, the reporting explained. “They include Maine, Kentucky, West Virginia, Montana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
“Overall, un-insurance in the 37 states that expanded Medicaid eligibility under the ACA (including D.C.) will more than double,” the report said, quoting Urban Institute.
In this third case the Supreme Court had to decide on — California v. Texas, No. 19-840 —the majority contended that “the states didn’t have standing to question the ACA’s validity. Separately, a group of attorneys general, led by the California attorney general, said that Obamacare was working effectively, given that the penalty was reduced to zero and, as such, they also argued that the “individual mandate” is separate from the workings of the law”, Market Watch reported.
Filtering through all the noise and lobbying efforts by health insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and their allies in Congress to discredit Obamacare, let us recall how the Affordable Care Act has indeed been saving lives by giving healthcare insurance to more Americans than ever before, especially during our war against COVID-19.
As MarketWatch reported:
“When enacted in 2010, the Affordable Care Act made several significant changes to the health insurance industry. It created new marketplaces for qualified health plans, it offered tax credits as subsidies for income-eligible people using those marketplace plans. It expanded Medicaid eligibility and also barred insurers from using pre-existing condition exclusions.
As of February, there were 11.3 million people enrolled in the marketplace plans, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Approximately 1 million people are also enrolled in the ACA’s Basic Health Program for income-eligible consumers. It also includes 14.8 million people with coverage via broadened Medicaid eligibility and around 4 million people who were already eligible for Medicaid, but gained coverage through outreach.
The Biden administration opened a special sign-up window through Aug. 15 to give people the chance to get coverage as the pandemic continued. More than 528,000 people signed up by April, according to the Associated Press.”
These facts beg real honest answers to the question: Why do Republicans want to kill Obamacare when they could not offer anything better to help save peoples’ lives?
Is health care just for the privileged few?
Isn’t health care an integral part of the fulfillment of the promise of America that in this country, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”?
Thankfully, the Biden administration is reclaiming this promise for the American people. Health care is a right for all, and not just for the rich and the powerful. A healthier citizenry creates a richer, more productive nation. Let us invest in our people. Health care and education for all is the key to America’s success, leadership and greatness.
