Pissing Off the Old Folks

Do you really want to do that if you're a Republican? It did get the AARP my membership renewal, though. I really liked this piece for explaining the block grant thing and bringing up age bands which I hadn't heard of.

The nation’s most famous retiree organization, which represents 38 million older Americans, has fired off letters critical of two proposals that have figured prominently in GOP discussions about replacing the Affordable Care Act. One of those proposals would relax the law’s “age bands.” The other would transform Medicaid into a so-called block grant.

First up, age bands.

The Affordable Care Act put a stop to that, by stipulating that insurers could charge their oldest customers no more than three times what they charge their youngest ones. This requirement is a big reason why many younger people pay more for insurance now than they did before the health care law came along.

Republicans love to talk about how relaxing or eliminating the age bands would mean lower premiums for younger people. And that’s true, even if the benefits for young consumers would be less dramatic than Republicans sometimes suggest. What Republicans don’t mention is that, as a consequence, premiums for older people would go back up again.

And block grants.

Republicans boast about these savings for the federal Treasury, along with the control it would give governors who bristle under Washington’s oversight. But with less money to spend, states wouldn’t be able to finance as many benefits for as many people.

They’d have to make cuts of their own ― some of which would almost surely fall on older people, particularly since the majority of spending in Medicaid goes to elderly and disabled people who use it to supplement Medicare. Among other things, Medicaid is the nation’s largest payer of nursing home care.

Yeah, the Cleveland Clinic is pissed, too. 

Doctors, nurses and students have signed an open letter pleading with the clinic to publicly condemn Trump's immigration ban and use its power to protect medical professionals from deportation. The letter also urges the hospital system to cancel a fundraiser set for later this month at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.

“Through this action you are supporting a president who has, in his first ten days in office, reinstated the global gag rule, weakened the Affordable Care Act, fast-tracked construction of both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines through legally protected native lands, and banned legal U.S. residents from majority-Muslim countries,” the signers said about the Cleveland Clinic's upcoming fundraiser. “All of these actions directly harm human health and well-being in the United States and abroad.

“Your willingness to hold your fundraiser at a Trump resort is an unconscionable prioritization of profit over people. It is impossible for the Cleveland Clinic to reconcile supporting its employees and patients while simultaneously financially and publicly aiding an individual who directly harms them.”

As of Friday morning, the letter had 1,141 signatories.