Working Americans pay the price as Washington’s health policies backfire

After 43 days, the government shutdown is over. After President Donald Trump illegally and cruelly cut off SNAP benefits to desperate Americans, including 16 million children, 42 million frightened people will be able to put food on their tables again. Federal employees will be paid. And hopefully airline schedules will return to normal.

But this will also happen: At a time when we are paying by far the highest prices in the world for health care, insurance premiums for tens of millions of people will skyrocket, and 15 million people will lose the coverage they currently have. As a result, research tells us that 50,000 Americans will die needlessly each year. The shutdown is over. Pain, suffering and death begin.

And all of this is happening in an already rigged economy. While the rich get richer, working families find it increasingly difficult to survive.

YOU DICK DURBIN: TRUMP AND REPUBLICANS ARE PLAYING SHUTDOWN GAMES WHILE DEMOCRATS FIGHT TO PROTECT HEALTH

Here’s the good news:

If you’re Elon Musk, the richest man alive, you’re $163 billion richer since Trump was elected. And even better, you’re on your way to becoming the world’s first trillionaire by having Tesla build millions of robots, which, by the way, will eliminate good-paying jobs in our country.

But it’s not just about Musk. Other multi-billionaires who sat behind Trump at the inauguration, such as Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, are also doing exceptionally well. In fact, at a time when income and wealth inequality are so great, the richest 1 percent now own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent, corporate profits are soaring, and CEOs receive huge compensation packages.

Here’s the bad news:

For those of you who aren’t rich, you’re probably struggling to make ends meet. Today, 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Millions of hard-working families are increasingly struggling to afford housing, health care, child care, education and even food. Unfortunately, 22 percent of seniors struggle to make ends meet on $15,000 a year or less. Almost half of older workers have no retirement savings. And the vast majority of young people will likely have a lower standard of living than their parents. Shamefully, in the richest country in the world, we now have the highest rates of elderly and childhood poverty of almost any major country.

And the situation is about to get much worse as a result of the continuing order that President Trump recently signed into law.

Let me give you some examples.

For the average 60-year-old couple earning about $85,000 a year, monthly premiums will increase from $602 to $2,647; these rates will quadruple, an increase of approximately $24,500 per year. If you include out-of-pocket expenses, many of these couples will be paying nearly 50% of their income on healthcare. This is crazy. This is unsustainable. People can’t do this.

The average family of four making $44,000 a year will see their monthly premiums triple; It will increase from $85 to $253.

Monthly premiums for the average person making $32,000 a year will also triple; It will increase from $58 to $180.

Why? Why should we deny healthcare to 15 million people and pay double premiums for more than 20 million? The answer: Paying a $1 trillion tax cut to the top 1%. Yes. Musk gets a tax break. Millions of people are losing healthcare. This may make sense to some people, but it doesn’t to me.

President Trump and some Republicans in Congress have complained that the Affordable Care Act is not an effective way to provide health care. They are right. Unfortunately, what they propose is even worse.

Although details are still sketchy, they want to eliminate Affordable Care Act tax credits, which average $6,500, and send checks to nearly 20 million Americans to buy health care on their own.

The problem is: How will someone who needs $150,000 a year for cancer treatment get the care they need with a $6,500 check? What should a pregnant mother do with a $6,500 check when the average cost of childbirth in America is $20,000? How can someone who has a heart attack cover $100,000 in hospital bills with just $6,500?

This absurd proposal would lead to more medical bankruptcies, more affordable care, and more Americans being left without the health care they desperately need.

So where do we go from here?

In the short term, we need to expand Affordable Care Act tax credits to prevent large premium increases. We need to repeal the $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the ACA so that 15 million Americans don’t lose their health care. If we don’t take these measures, too many people will suffer and die.

In the long term, we need to seriously discuss what kind of healthcare system we want as Congress and as a nation. Here are some of the questions that need to be answered:

Should we remain the only major country in the world that does not guarantee healthcare to everyone as a human right?

What can we learn from other countries that provide health care to all their people at half the cost per capita?

How do we cost-effectively provide high-quality health care to every man, woman and child in our country?

Should the primary function of our healthcare system be to enable insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry to make huge profits?

In my opinion, the answers to these questions are not complicated. We need to improve Medicare and expand it to cover all Americans.

That’s exactly what the Medicare for All Act, which I introduced with my 15 colleagues in the Senate and more than 100 members of the House, would do over a four-year transition period.

How does Medicare for All work?

This will provide comprehensive healthcare to every American and end all premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and out-of-pocket expenses. It will create a much simpler and more efficient system. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Medicare for All would save $650 billion a year, primarily by eliminating the extraordinary amount of administrative waste and profiteering by insurance companies. There would be no more “networks” and every American would have the freedom to choose their own doctors and hospitals. Medicare for All would also do a much better job of keeping Americans healthy by placing greater emphasis on disease prevention and primary care. It would be financed by a progressive tax system that requires the rich and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

In the first year, Medicare benefits for seniors will be expanded to include dental care, vision coverage and hearing aids, and the eligibility age will be lowered to 55. All children under the age of 18 will also be included in the system.

In the second year, the eligibility age will be lowered to 45; it increased to 35 in the third year. By the fourth year, every man, woman, and child in America would be covered by Medicare for All.

Guaranteeing health care as a human right is not only morally and economically necessary. At a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans understand that our current system is broken, dysfunctional, and cruel, it is long past time for us to move in a very different direction. The answer is Medicare for All.

Let’s handle it.