Is it over, or just beginning?

Last Thursday night, into Friday morning the final drama in our U.S. Senate efforts to repeal Obamacare ended—at least for now. 

Three Republican Senators, Lisa Murkowski, who was threatened by Trump that her state would lose all federal funding because of her vote, John McCain, who was told by Trump that he was “no American hero,” and Susan Collins, who listened to her frightened constituents, voted NO. 

Can you imagine the agony that the people who are covered by ACA and who may be receiving treatment for cancer, diabetes or heart disease have been feeling all these months while our representatives in Washington decide whether they should live or die?

By the time this letter to the editor is published, this could have changed.

Who knows—as John McCain said before the vote, “Watch the show.”

If it had passed it was called the “skinny repeal” which meant that many of the provisions of Obamacare or ACA would stay, but that premiums and deductibles would go up by 20 percent.

So for all the Americans who were hoping to reduce their costs this bill wouldn’t have accomplished that. The bill that died in the Senate on Friday would not have fully repealed the Affordable Care Act.  But, under this bill, 16 Million people would have lost their health insurance—15 million of them in 2018.

But it didn’t pass.

The problem is that there are problems with the Affordable Care Act that need to be addressed.  Some areas of the country only have one provider for the insurance exchanges and the cost of those plans and the deductibles are too high.

There are tweaks that could be made to ACA which would solve this problem, but our Republicans Senators and Representatives refuse to talk to the Democrats.

When Medicare was passed in the 60s, it was not a perfect bill. It took years of “tweaks” to make it work. And it works well.

 My husband and I both benefit by having the peace of mind of being in Medicare. Even one of our “very conservative” doctors has admitted that the only solution for affordable health care for all Americans is Medicare for All.

So maybe the next step would be to fix the Affordable Care Act and then get our two parties together to come up with a plan so that all Americans will have access to affordable health care—Medicare for All.  Make it happen!

Write your senators and representatives and tell them that we deserve affordable health care!

Bette Holland

Dawson County