Republicans vow to repeal Obamacare, but President-elect Trump has injected confusion by claiming that the replacement will provide health insurance for all. But many health experts fear what comes next, reports Dennis J Bernstein.
By Dennis J Bernstein
All eyes are on the Republicans and Obamacare, as the dominant GOP now proceeds toward dismantling President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare policy plan, formally known as the Affordable Care Act. What they plan to replace it with is still anybody’s guess.
I spoke recently to public health care expert and single-payer advocate Dr. Don McCain about the debate, the negatives and positives of Obamacare, and what kind of health care system we need in the U.S. to really attend to the medical needs of all people.
McCain, a senior health policy fellow with the group Physicians for a National Health Program, said recently about the current debate, “President Obama meeting with the Congressional Democrats, and Vice President-elect Pence meeting with the Republicans are being touted as a strategy efforts on the two opposite sides of the health care reform debate. But are they really opposites?”
Dennis Bernstein: What do you mean by that? Aren’t they opposites? It does seem like the Democrats are on one side, and the Republicans are on the other.
President Barack Obama signing the Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010. (Photo credit: Keith Ellison)
Dr. Don McCain: That’s certainly the way they framed it. Of course, they passed Obamacare. The Democrats passed that even though it was a Republican plan. And now the Republicans claim it’s a Democrat plan that has to be repealed. Yet, what are they talking about, as far as reform is concerned? They are talking about tweaking our current system. Well, that’s all that Obamacare did.
We have a highly dysfunctional system, fragmented, with extreme administrative excesses. And a system that doesn’t function very well because it leaves people with insurance in debt. It leaves too many people uninsured and takes away choices for our health care providers, through these narrow networks that are increasing in prevalence.
The Democrats did improve that,…