Trump, Price, and Verma: Bad news for the health of Americans, including Trump voters

The election of Donald Trump as President continues to be extensively analyzed. It demonstrates major divisions among our populace. One of those that has been discussed a lot is that the “white working class” that voted for him by a 2:1 margin will suffer a lot from the policies likely to be implemented by his administration. Not more, and probably less, than minority people, but a lot.

Healthcare and health insurance is one of those areas, as discussed by me in several recent posts and by Paul Krugman in the New York Times, December 2, 2016, “Seduced and betrayed by Donald Trump”. He notes that anger about their health care coverage, and in particular the dramatic increases in premiums under the ACA exchanges, drove many people to choose Mr. Trump’s promise to replace it with “something terrific”. Of course, he never specified what that would be, for the same reason that the Republicans in Congress have never been specific, which is that any replacement plan that does not move “left” toward a more universal coverage plan such as the single-payer advocated by Senator Bernie Sanders (and me) will be much worse for most people, including most Trump voters, who will either lose or have to pay a lot more (if they can!) for their health insurance coverage. Repealing Obamacare means that many of the 13 million newly insured (a majority white, for the record) who received insurance under the exchange will not get rate cuts, but rather they will get no coverage. Certainly not those who need the insurance most, because they have pre-existing conditions that insurance companies were mandated by ACA to cover. As Krugman puts it, “we’re probably looking at more than five million Trump supporters, many of whom have chronic health problems and recently got health insurance for the first time, who just voted to make their lives nastier, more brutish, and shorter.” This is made clear in the Times article on December 3, 2016 “GOP plans immediate repeal of health law, then a delay” by Robert Pear, Jennifer Steinhauer and Thomas Kaplan. The reason is because the only plan they have will yank health insurance coverage for so many people, and despite their vociferous opposition and multiple votes to repeal ACA, they do not want to do that, at least right away.

The best evidence for their long term plan to, basically, remove health insurance coverage from many Americans including their base of support is the appointment of Rep. Tom Price (R, GA) as HHS Secretary. Mr. Price has been a leader of the Tea Party movement and a major Congressional figure calling for the repeal of Obamacare. His solution is not completely fleshed out, but does include eliminating guaranteed issue, community rating, and federal support for the exchanges. He is a fan of vouchers, an idea advocated for decades by conservative think tanks, and which, I guarantee (and this is far more of a certainty than Mr. Trump’s promises), can NEVER work, especially over the long term. Vouchers will never cover the cost of a decent insurance policy; people with health problems will naturally be the first to seek coverage, and faced by the adverse selection insurers will raise the premiums, co-pays, and deductibles for them. If there are problems with this under Obamacare, vouchers will make those look pale by comparison. And by getting out of the running-the-infrastructure business, the government will ensure that it never gets better.

Price, a wealthy orthopedist from suburban Atlanta, does not really care. He represents rich doctors who want to be able to charge whatever they want to be able to charge, and care only for the people who have insurance good enough to pay it. Sorry, Trump voters with not much money, chronic disease, and difficulty paying even ACA premiums, that isn’t you. And when you get to an age that you can get Medicare, finally having federally-supported coverage, Mr. Price has another answer for you – privatize Medicare! Make it subject to the same market forces that have made health care and health insurance so unaffordable and unavailable to younger folks affect the elderly too! The ACA has modified the egregiously negative impact of private sector health insurance for the under-65 group; the crumbum Price wants to both reverse that benefit and extend the damage to seniors too.

When Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare law at the Truman Library in 1965, presenting Harry and Bess Truman with cards #1 and #2, he quoted the former President from nearly 20 years earlier: "Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and to enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. And the time has now arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and to help them get that protection." LBJ then added that “There are more than 18 million Americans [in 1965; way more now] over the age of 65. Most of them have low incomes. Most of them are threatened by illness and medical expenses that they cannot afford. And through this new law, Mr. President [referring to Mr. Truman], every citizen will be able, in his productive years when he is earning, to insure himself against the ravages of illness in his old age.”

This is what Tom Price and his colleagues want to reverse. The AMA, with its shameful history of actually having blocked Truman’s health plan, and unsuccessful opposition to Medicare, is endorsing him. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is endorsing him as well. The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) more tepidly expresses optimism. Presumably these are political decisions, to maintain access. After all, in the ongoing battles between insurers and providers (patients are rarely a real player), at least he is a provider. But many others, including Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and Common Dreams, as well as the medical students of Future Docs, have appropriately condemned Price and these organizations endorsing him.

Mr. Price will be joined by Seema Verma, who will head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Verma helped Mike Pence design the Indiana version of Medicaid expansion. On the plus side, that state did expand Medicaid, helping people more than those states that did not. On the minus side, the requirement that everyone covered has to pay meant at least 1/3 of those who would have been eligible did not sign up. I guess she is the moderate!

Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks are, so far, a panoply of people who are either right-wing ideologues who wish to destroy everything that has been done to help the American people at least back to the Great Society and maybe to the New Deal, or are billionaires who speak for the corporate financial ruling class that he attacked so effectively during his campaign, or both. An example of the latter is anti-public education billionaire Betsy DeVos to head the Department of Education. Myron Ebell, a noted climate-change denier, will head EPA. Steven Mnuchin, a leading Goldman Sachs banker, will be Treasury Secretary. Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL), denied a judgeship because of his racist beliefs and practices will be Attorney General. Trump's nominee for Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, according to Money, alone has 10 times the net worth of the entire cabinet of President George W. Bush. Talk about foxes guarding the henhouse! Compared to these folks, naming El Chapo to head the DEA, as suggested in a New Yorker satire by Andy Borowitz, would be a moderate pick.

The future of not only public health, but also your individual private health, now and when you get to retirement age, is in great jeopardy. But, then, so is everything else that helps people. Not to mention the earth, since global warming is likely to accelerate during a Trump administration. There is an endless string of battles before us.

And we must join every one.