Traverse City Record-Eagle

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March 2, 2012

Forum: At stake if Obamacare is repealed

By RON POLLACK ----

As the presidential primary season continues, voters are scanning the field of candidates to find those differences that will earn a candidate their vote. Unfortunately, the Republican candidates vying for their party's nomination have one position in common: They all agree they would undo the gains this nation has made in the past two generations in making health care affordable and accessible to more and more Americans.

It's easy to miss the profound implications of what these candidates propose to do because their most popular target is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or, in campaign parlance, "Obamacare." Their approach to the health care law has been uniform: Disparage the law, call it a "government takeover" of health care, swear together to repeal it, be careful not to say one single word about what's in the law or what it offers Americans in terms of improved access and affordability of care.

Just call for its repeal to give the president a big political defeat.

The candidates don't talk about the benefits to Michigan residents of the Affordable Care Act, so here's a quick inventory of what repeal would cost Michiganders:

• Michigan's 1.7 million Medicare beneficiaries would no longer be eligible for free preventive services, such as mammograms and colonoscopies. Nearly three-quarters of beneficiaries (71.4 percent) took advantage of the benefit for at least one free preventive service between January and November 2011.

• Insurance companies could again deny health coverage for children with a pre-existing condition, a practice now prohibited. Nearly 181,000 children in Michigan have been diagnosed with a pre-existing condition like asthma or diabetes that could have resulted in denial of coverage in the individual market prior to reform.

• Many young adults would no longer be able to remain on their parents' insurance. In Michigan, 98,500 young adults are now eligible to continue receiving coverage in this manner.

• Women would continue to pay higher premiums than men. In Michigan, the vast majority of the best-selling individual market plans — 80 percent — currently charge a 40-year-old, non-smoking woman higher premiums than a 40-year-old, non-smoking man. Gender rating will be made illegal in 2014, unless the Affordable Care Act is repealed.

But beware. The assault on the Affordable Care Act is, so to speak, just the tip of the rhetorical iceberg. Like all icebergs, the big, dangerous part lies beneath the surface. That great danger is the fact that these candidates all support drastic changes to Medicaid and Medicare. Taken together, repeal and revision of these three landmark laws would affect the ability of Americans to have access to quality, affordable health care from earliest childhood.

It's good to seek differences between candidates, but, in this case, it's essential for voters to see what the Republican candidates have in common, and that's rolling back the clock to 1964, before the advent of Medicare as we know it. Those who object have no real choice in this primary.

About the author: Ron Pollack is executive director of Families USA, a national organization for health care consumers. He helped prepare the Patients' Bill of Rights enacted by many state legislatures. He is the former dean of the Antioch School of Law.

About the forum: The forum is a periodic column of opinion written by Record-Eagle readers in their areas of interest or expertise. Submissions of 500 words or less may be made by e-mailing letters@record-eagle.com. Please include biographical information and a photo.

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