Graham-Cassidy Bill

The latest Republican partisan attempt in Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare carelessly panders to key supporters while failing to improve the current healthcare system in the United States. The Graham-Cassidy bill would loosen regulations for private coverage, Medicaid, and state usage of federal insurance subsidies. Although this may appear to uphold the valid and understandable conservative principle of limited government and the constitutional imperative of reserving powers for the states, this deregulation leaves those with pre-existing conditions vulnerable to weakened or withheld coverage by insurance companies to whom their medical histories do not appeal.

Obamacare regulations require insurers to charge the same premiums for those with and without pre-existing conditions. This proviso seeks to protect those with chronic illnesses from exploitation or abandonment by predatory companies. In actuality, however, it preserves a continuous and agonizing conflict between private companies, who are solely interested in profiting from illness, and a government charged with protecting the electorate and fed by corporate funds. The Trump administration has gorged itself on the benefits of this ruthlessly hedonistic plutocracy. Now, it desires to appeal both to insurance companies, which by their very nature as for-profit private institutions are concerned with maximizing revenue, and to voters anxious about Obamacare. Unfortunately, the single-payer system of socialized medicine lies undiscussed by all these parties in the United States, even though it serves millions across the world. Fear of government overreach plagues all discussion of socialized medicine. In the medical sector, private corporations free of voter oversight or control bilk patients for overpriced services, equipment, and pharmaceuticals. Too few analyses of the American healthcare system question the wisdom of the laissez-faire approach to a system that denies choice to customers whose survival and quality of life depend on prompt and comprehensive medical care.

--Sam St. John '18