Get ready folks, the Republican healthcare apocalypse, via legislation that they have pushed through Congress or by decree from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will be unlike anything we’ve experienced in the last 70 years.
Need evidence? $500 billion in cuts to Medicare; 200 percent or more increases in health insurance for working folks as subsidies end. $800 billion cut from Medicaid, and new work requirements which could result in 15 million unnecessary deaths.
Note that undocumented immigrants do not get Medicaid.
These are your tax dollars being redirected from healthcare to a war with Venezuela by this administration.
In the coming months, only the very wealthy will be able to comfortably afford preventive care or cancer treatment, and even they will have an accessibility problem if their local hospital closes.
Closings will also include our maternity wards and nursing homes as the system implodes.
Every working family, every retiree and people with disabilities will be impacted, unless there are major corrections. This is not an exaggeration.
No one would argue that while our professional caregivers do their best, our health care system is upside-down, with corporate insurance profiting in the billions while denying care.
But what’s coming from Congress is no fix.
When you learn the facts, you may become one of the many Americans who are ready to consider a system without for-profit giants as your healthcare middleman.
And who knows? You may decide to help unelect those in Washington, D.C., who brought about this coming apocalypse.
Lisa Dekker
Port Angeles