Advocates for retention of the Affordable Care Act scored a major victory when Paul Ryan withdrew his American Health Care Act from a vote, knowing that it would be resoundingly defeated, and the large number of no votes would add embarrassment to his cause.
President Trump, unable to admit that it was rejected by his side, blamed the Democrats for not agreeing to it and ungraciously gave it back to us.
He had promised to repeal and replace the ACA immediately and in his impatience and total ignorance was surprised that it was so complicated!
Flush with this victory, our determined citizens had proved that the power lay in their hands to move their representatives.
Town halls had impressed them mightily and they got the message, but we must not rest on our laurels.
At long last, the term single payer seems to have risen from the (What is that?) stage to recognized terminology.
More public figures are actually mentioning it as the only feasible way to provide what our citizens want at an affordable cost.
How quickly will the single payer experts start to announce repeatedly that there is no alternative if we want to provide universal coverage? We cannot lose momentum.
Speaker Ryan had tried to eliminate all 10 health services considered essential in a viable plan, more fool he. And the savings derived from reducing Medicaid were going to provide billions in reducing taxes for the rich!
There is absolutely no logic in the argument that we need more choice in the kind of coverage we will carry.
Do we have choice of what illness or accident will afflict us; are we clairvoyant enough to predict what it will cost to make us well?
Since we are committed as a nation to take care of everyone, if we decrease coverage and treat people in hospital emergency rooms, the greater cost will be shared by all of us.
And since those without coverage are likely to wait until a problem becomes serious, the cost will be greater than prevention, and we will share that greater cost.
If we want to guarantee reasonable cost, we must throw out the private insurance companies and restrain the profit-gouging drug companies.
Insurers don’t ever seem to lower prices because of competition; that is a myth.
Competition means more and smaller companies that will surely not be able to provide more competition.
And we know that lobbying our legislators with millions in campaign money for many years does not pay for more health care.
That message should appear on posters.
We do not need their highly paid executives. And perhaps we can be rid of most of the advertising.
Medicare seems to get along without those expenses. Insurers’ administration staff will take care of the real work.
If an already existing model is needed, the New York Health Act has been passed twice by the New York State Assembly, and waits for us to persuade our Senate.
And California’s lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, who has expressed an interest in running for Governor, has added universal coverage as part of his aims.
In the meantime, our ignorant, shallow, impatient, distracted, pathologically lying, gauche, immoral, fear and hate-mongering, lazy president continues on his disgraceful path to demean the respect we earned as a great nation before he decided that only he could make us great.
Esther Confino
New Hyde Park
