You’ve seen the reports. The liberal media is full of claims that the GOP’s new healthcare plan will leave millions uninsured. This plan is so bad that it will literally kill Americans. While you already know that this is hyperbole at its worst, we should still take a minute to really think about the consequences of a new healthcare plan. The failure to do so last time left us with the current Obamacare mess, and we should hold ourselves to a higher standard.
So, let’s assume the worst and that the GOP plan really will slash insurance rates. Does that hold the deadly consequences we’re being told to expect? You won’t be surprised to see that the left is wrong again, but you might be surprised about why.
Data
I’m going to throw some numbers at you. Before Obamacare fully swung into effect, there were 48 million uninsured Americans. This represented 15.5 percent of the total population. By the end of 2015 (the most recent complete data sample), the number of uninsured dropped to 29 million, or 9 percent. The law claims full responsibility for this change even though Obamacare at its peak has only insured 6.4 million people. You can already see a contradiction in the numbers, but, for the sake of argument, we’ll still assume that the new health bill will slash insurance rates to pre-Obamacare levels. Let’s look at some other numbers.
While insurance rates have soared, some other medical stats haven’t fared so well. Medical mistakes tops that list. In 2010, 180,000 deaths in America were linked to medical mistakes. That seems like a large number, but it still fell far short of being a major killer. In 2015, that number grew to 250,000 — enough to make it the third largest killer of Americans. Only heart disease and the combination of all cancers kill more people today than medical mistakes. This makes Obamacare one of the deadliest and the very fastest growing killer of Americans—a shocking stat that no Democrat will ever tell you.
Still, you could argue that increased medical mistakes are a worthwhile price to pay for universal access to healthcare. The problem is that these mistakes combine with a general overburden on the entire system to devastating effect. In 2015, the life expectancy for all Americans dropped for the first time in over 20 years (why didn’t Democrats ever tell us this!). According to the numbers, every demographic of Americans has begun dying younger since Obamacare took full effect. Race, creed and financial status all bear no impact on this change. Now, the liberals will try to tell us that correlation does not imply causation. Fair enough. What is undeniable is that our healthcare system is stretched far beyond its capacity, and this problem is a primary contributor to declining lifespans.
The New Bill
It is mathematically impossible that the new health bill can remove 22 million Americans from their insurance. That said, it will likely lead to a short-term drop in insurance participation. Several million Americans could suddenly find themselves uninsured.
The surprising irony of it all is that this is a hidden benefit of the new plan. As things stand, participating in American healthcare is far deadlier than the alternative, and it is certainly cheaper. The numbers unmistakably show that subsidizing health insurance is not helping Americans. Instead, the hope to reverse these ugly trends is to reduce participation and find better spending.
The new bill is the first step, but it isn’t a final solution. Taking government money away from subsidies and instead investing it in research, facilities and personnel that can increase the capacity of our entire system is the only long-term approach that will restore life expectancy, reduce mistakes and enable all Americans access to longer, healthier lives.
The left had their chance. They implemented Obamacare, and it failed on every level. It was named “The Affordable Care Act.” It made everything far more expensive. It was championed as a way to help every American live a healthier life with better access to healthcare.
Instead it is killing us all by dramatically increasing demand on healthcare facilities without offering additional resources to meet that demand. We have seen this problem in socialized medicine across the planet, and now it is killing us at home. It is time for change, and even an Obamacare repeal without any replacement would still be healthier for all Americans.
~ American Liberty Report
