Thursday, July 20, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEWS

Health care town hall in Plymouth gives voice to Michiganders’ 
fears over ramifications of possible repeal of Obamacare

Nearly 200 people attended 

a town hall on health care 
Sunday morning in Plymouth, 
hoping 
to 
receive 
answers 

on 
how 
their 
care 
would 

change under the Better Care 
Reconciliation Act, the GOP plan 
to repeal and replace the Obama 
administration’s Affordable Care 
Act currently making its way 
through the Senate.

The town hall was hosted 

by 
the 
11th 
Congressional 

District’s chapter of Indivisible, 
a 
progressive 
activist 
group 

formed 
in 
response 
to 
the 

Trump administration. Fielding 
questions were Rep. Dan Kildee 
(D–Mich.), state Rep. Christine 
Greig 
(D–Farmington 
Hills) 

and Charles Gaba, an expert on 
health care who runs the website 
ACAsignups.net, which provides 
data on national health care.

The 
version 
of 
the 
GOP 

bill that passed the House of 
Representatives 
in 
May 
was 

projected by the nonpartisan 
Congressional Budget Office to 
kick 14 million people off health 
insurance by next year and 23 
million by 2026, which Kildee 
called a tragedy at the beginning 
of the town hall.

“It’s a tragedy of human 

dimensions 
that 
is 
almost 

impossible to contemplate,” he 
said.

Throughout 
the 
town 

hall, Kildee stressed that the 
impact of the BCRA would not 
be limited to just the tens of 
millions who would become 
uninsured because of it. Like it 
or not, Kildee said “we all pay for 
one another’s health care.”

“The 
loss 
of 
access 
to 

preventive care simply means 
that 
as 
those 
individuals 

ultimately access the health 
care system, they will do it at 
a point in time when they are 
far more sick, when the cost 
will be a higher cost for a more 
serious disease and very likely 

will result in care that is not 
compensated,” he said. “So what 
happens? All the costs that are 
not compensated are shifted. 
Shifted to people who have 
health insurance, or ultimately 
shifted to the biggest insurer, 
the United States government, 
through Medicare.”

Under the BCRA, Medicare — 

the 
single-payer 

health 
insurance 

system 
managed 

by 
the 
federal 

government, 
benefitting 
U.S. 

citizens over the 
age of 65 — will 
become insolvent, 
Kildee said.

In addition to 

the 
problems 
it 

would cause for 
those on Medicare, 
the 
bill, 
which 

puts a prohibition 
on 
funding 

for 
Planned 

Parenthood, 
would 
also 

severely 
reduce 

care for women, 
Greig and Kildee 
pointed out.

“Whether 
we 
like 
it 
or 

not — and I don’t — the Hyde 
Amendment is still in effect that 
prevents federal dollars from 
being used for abortion services,” 
Kildee 
said. 
“But 
because 

Planned Parenthood provides a 
legal right to women to access 
those services and also provides 
other services, the 12 men in 
the senate who are making the 
decision about what this bill says 
have decided that women should 
not have that right. And that’s 
pathetic.”

And 
though 
the 
Hyde 

Amendment 
bans 
federal 

funding of abortion services, 
as Kildee pointed out, abortion 
should be treated and funded as 
health care, Greig said.

“Abortion is health care,” she 

said. “We can’t shy away from 
it. We are at the lowest levels 
of 
unintended 
pregnancies 

right now, the lowest levels of 
STDs, teen pregnancies. And 
a lot of that has to do with the 
services provided by Planned 
Parenthood.”

Kildee 
characterized 

the 
defunding 
of 
Planned 

Parenthood 
as 
governmental 

overreach 
by 
Republicans, 

calling them hypocrites.

“We have to make sure that 

we’re clear on what this is,” he 
said. “Remember that whole ‘if 
you like your doctor, you can 
keep your doctor,’ and what 
they said about Obama when 
there were problems with that? 
They’re actually saying that you 
can only go to the health care 
provider that they approve of.”

Gaba, whose website tracks 

data on the Affordable Care Act, 
explained some of the important 
changes that would take effect 
upon passage of the BCRA.

“Under the ACA, insurance 

companies 
for 
all 
plans 

guaranteed issue. ‘Guaranteed 
issue’ means they have to sell 
a policy to you,” he said. “And 
that’s really important, because 
before the ACA, if you had a 
pre-existing 
condition, 
like, 

say, being pregnant, or having 
cancer, pretty much whatever 
the insurance company defined 

as a pre-existing condition, they 
could say ‘nah, we’re not going to 
sign you up.’ “

But according to Gaba, one of 

the most important aspects of the 
BCRA was not what it would do 
to Obamacare, but what it would 
do to Medicaid, the government-
sponsored insurance program 
for 
low-resource 
individuals 

and 
families. 

According to the 
CBO reporton the 
BCRA, Medicaid 
spending 
would 

decrease by $772 
billion over the 
next ten years.

“The Medicaid 

impact is actually 
the larger story 
here,” 
Gaba 

said. 
“Around 

75 
million 

Americans 
are 

on 
Medicaid. 

The Senate bill 
not only repeals 
the expansion of 
Medicaid, but it 
also 
decimates 

standard 
Medicaid 
that 

has nothing to do with the ACA. 
This was supposed to be about 
repealing Obamacare, it was not 
supposed to decimate Medicaid 
as well.”

In response to an audience 

member’s 
question 
about 

Democratic 
Party 
messaging, 

which the audience member said 
wasn’t bold enough and focused 
only on opposing Republicans, 
Kildee and Greig both said their 
long-term vision for health care 
was to have universal coverage.

“I think we all have to 

acknowledge that in the last 
decade or so — even less than 
that — as a society, as a nation, 
we’ve made some progress on 
this 
question,” 
Kildee 
said. 

“Clearly, the passage of the ACA 
is a massive step forward. That’s 
not what I’m talking about. 
Just listen to the debate now as 
compared to the debate that took 
place under a decade ago. There’s 

an 
acknowledgement 
across 

much of the political spectrum 
that we have to get to universal 
coverage and that the federal 
government has to guarantee 
this right.”

And coverage should not be 

dependent on your employment 
status, Greig said.

“Back in the day, I used to put 

in payroll HR benefit systems for 
corporations, and I used to have 
to plug in the new charges every 
year for the plans so they could 
take the payroll deductions and 
all that, and I remember back 
then, just thinking ‘that is just 
nuts that we tie employment 
and health benefits together,’ “ 
she said. “We’ve gotta rethink 
this, and make sure that we 
have universal coverage and 
it’s not forced to be tied with 
employment.”

Bob McCreevey, an audience 

member from Oakland County, 
said he had given his testimony 
on the pain he had been caused by 
privatization of health services 
at five different town halls, as 
well as before a committee in 
the state legislature. His son, 
who 
suffers 
from 
paranoid 

schizophrenia, had been in a 
support program for 12 years that 
kept him in a stable condition 
“beyond all belief,” McCreevey 
said. After the government voted 
to privatize the program, he said 
the annual cost of caring for his 
son increased from about $1,800 
to $180,000. Testifying before 
the House committee, he said, he 
lost his faith in government.

“It’s different when you hear 

it on the news,” he said. “When 
you sit in that room over there, 
on the third floor of the Capitol, 
and you watch 20 Republicans, 
and it’s like pulling the strings 
on a Howdy-Doody: ‘yes, yes, 
yes, yes, yes.’ It’s disgusting. 
This is no longer America that I 
know. When we don’t take care 
of ‘of, by, and for the people,’ and 
the only thing we care about is 
the half of one percent that are 
running this country in a broken 
government.”

Hundreds come to listen to Congressman Dan Kildee, State Representative Christine Greig, 
health care expert Charles Gaba field questions, hear stories from constituents in District 11

By ANDREW HIYAMA
Summer Daily News Editor

10

But because Planned Parenthood 
provides a legal right to women to 
access those services, the 12 men 
in the senate who are making the 
decision about what this bill says 
have decided that women should 

not have that right. And that’s 

pathetic. 

