GOP
presidential contender Mitt Romney has said only one thing about the Affordable
Care Act. It must go and on day one of his administration if elected he will
start the ball rolling to repeal it. The Supreme Court may well save him from
this braggadocio, vote pandering boast if the four ultra-conservatives justices
joined by the court's swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, get their way. They have
given every hint that they will scrap the law.
What
Romney and the court conservatives have not said are two things. One is what
they'd put in its place that's better. The other is what they will do to aid
the millions that were and to a large extent still are locked out of having
access to affordable health care after it's struck down. The law has indisputably been a huge first step
toward providing initial access with the possibility of even wider access to
decent health care. It has vastly increased funding for community health
centers, eliminated the odious and blatantly discriminatory pre condition
excuse that private insurers routinely used for decades to insure only the
healthiest, and those best able to pay. It would establish a new office of
Minority Health within the Department of Health and Human Services. It has
provided resources for screening and prevention, chronic disease management
initiatives, and health education and prevention services. This includes
scholarships and grants to increase diversity in the healthcare workforce. It
would ultimately provide direct financial assistance to more than thirty
million uninsured to help them to buy insurance coverage.
The Act then would
essentially partly level the very unlevel playing field for blacks
and Hispanics who make up nearly half of the estimated 50 million Americans
with absolutely no access to affordable or any health care. Put even more bluntly, it would save thousands
of their lives and save billions in taxpayer dollars that now go and would continue
to go to treating the chronically sick that flood and overburden county
hospitals solely because they have nowhere else to go when sick. The crisis for
the uninsured if the law is torpedoed is even grimmer for African-Americans.
The
majority of black uninsured are far more likely than the one in four whites who
are uninsured to experience problems getting treatment at a hospital or clinic.
This has devastating health and public policy consequences. According to a study by the Joint Center for Political and
Economic Studies, blacks are far more likely than whites to suffer higher rates
of catastrophic illness and disease, and are much less likely to obtain basic
drugs, tests, preventive screenings and surgeries. They are more likely to
recover slower from illness, and they die much younger.
Studies
have
found
that when blacks do receive treatment, the care they receive is more likely to
be substandard than that of whites. Reports indicate that even when blacks are
enrolled in high quality health plans, the racial gap in the care and quality
of medical treatment still remains low.
The
health care law even when all its provisions eventually kick in during the next
decade will not completely end the excessively high costs of health care or
fully guarantee universal coverage. But it is a monumental start.
In
a crass, patronizing and insulting political jab at President Obama, Romney has
repeatedly claimed that Obama squandered his first term working on a health
care law that's flawed, unpopular, and won't work. If the Supreme Court knocks
it down, that supposedly proves that it was a giant waste of time and
presidential resources. And even if the court lets all or most of it stand, it
doesn't change the fact that it's a bad law, says Romney.
If
that's the case, then the ball is directly in Romney and the GOP's court to
come up with a law that will prohibit insurers from excluding those with
pre-existing conditions, provide subsidies for the poorest of the poor, and
guarantee coverage for tens of thousands of children and younger persons that
did not have access to quality care before the Act's passage. In short those
who have perennially been shut out of the health care system. For a
presidential candidate and a party, that has turned saying no to meaningful
health care reform into a high art, and has mocked and belittled as "Obamacare"
the one tangible effort by a presidential administration in the past two
decades to do that, don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author
and political analyst. He is a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and a
weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The
Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America
Media. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK-Radio and the
Pacifica Network.
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Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/earlhutchinson
