An undercard on the AP story on the Avera/Sanford premium increases that Trump isn’t solving—one Sioux Falls resident says the Affordable Care Act is working well for him:
Mike Rifen, a Sioux Falls resident who has an Avera plan through the Affordable Care Act, said that even as his premiums have increased, his out-of-pocket costs have generally gone down because he receives subsidies.
The retiree, who turns 64 on Saturday, said he’s hoping to make it one more year until he qualifies for Medicare, though he said lung cancer could claim him sooner. Rifen praised his coverage, saying he would be dead without it after the cancer diagnosis and a stroke several years ago [“SD Insurers Urge Trump to Make Health Law Payments,” AP via Pierre Capital Journal, 2017.08.16].
So not only has the 124% premium increase about which Thune/Rounds/Noem have deceptively moaned not hurt Rifen, but the ACA that they promised to repeal has saved his life.
The reason the premiums go up is because Rounds/Thune/Noem defunded it. They now say Obamacare is broken but they are the ones that broke it. Now they think that because it is broken that it should be thrown out. Throw out the ones that broke it.
The gutting of the ACA/Obamacare will also gut Medicare. What is missing is the conversation that these three crooks and liars do not want discussed, the uprooting and killing of Medicaid. Medicaid is part of Social Security so any of the changes and disruptions that will come about with republican meddling, unravels the foundations upon which Social Security stand. So this is much more than the ACA/Obamacare, it is also about Social Security and all that it entails, including Medicare and Medicaid. Think they will not come after their holy grail, Social Security, they already are.
I have emailed and called the SD Congressional delegation countless times in an effort to tell them the ACA has been the best health coverage my husband and I have had in 40 years of marriage. They don’t seem to give a flying fig and send back canned messages on how fellow S.Dakotans have been hurt by rising premiums. All I can say is I will not forget their voting records and how they aggressively tried to hurt us in the process.
Standard Republican rhetoric almost always subjugates life to money. It may not be what they believe in (the pro-life meme), but they know it’s the tune that gets them elected. They cast themselves as an antagonist to the highwayman (your money OR your life) and promise you your money AND your life. The play’s the thing.