The Republican machinations to end healthcare for millions of Americans often defy logic. Yesterday, Wisconsin's dumb Senator, Ron Johnson, did a press conference with fellow Senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and Bill Cassidy. The four wanted to make it clear that the"skinny" GOP Bill to end healthcare was unacceptable. They wanted to express their hope that the awful bill would never become law.
Graham called the bill a "disaster", "a fraud", "terrible policy", and "a half-assed approach". The bill would kick millions off of healthcare and result in 20% premium increases over current projections for years to come. Late last night, Graham, Johnson, and Cassidy voted for the bill anyway.
On his turn to speak at the press conference, Senator Johnson told the woeful tale of a couple, Shari and Vern Colby of River Falls, Wisconsin. Vern drives a milk truck 60-70 hours a week. Shari works for a florist. The couple evidently bought insurance on the Exchange. They believed themselves eligible for Premium Tax Credits and received these as advanced payments, greatly lowering the costs of their monthly premiums. At the end of the year, Shari and Vern found that they had made too much money to qualify for the tax credits. They were required to repay the credits that they had already received, amounting to about $15,000.
According to Johnson, the couple had to tap their 401K to repay the government. He claimed that they had to sell their house to get the rest of the money.
Naturally, Johnson didn't mention the benefits that the Colbys gained from the ACA. Shari had a pre-existing condition. Before the ACA, she may not have been able to buy health insurance at any price. If she could have found an insurer, the couple might have paid much more than the $15,000 tax credit plus any monthly payments that they had already made. Before the ACA, nobody was eligible for government help in paying the ever-rising cost of insurance.
The couple was victim of one of the most easily-fixable flaws of the current ACA. The Premium Tax Credit is available to people who make up to 400% of the federal poverty level. Last year, that was $63,720 for a family of two like the Colbys. The law provides that nobody under the 400% income cap pays more than 9.66% of their income on health insurance.
However, the fixable flaw is that people earning even one dollar over 400% of the poverty level are ineligible for any tax credit. One more dollar of income can be the difference between a $12,000 credit and nothing. Unlike most other tax credits that gradually phase-out with higher income, this premium tax credit has a dramatic income cliff. I know. We buy our insurance on the exchange and have had to deal with this very provision.
Johnson admitted that nothing the Republicans are doing in any of the proposals are addressing the challenges and problems of people like Shari and Vern. Johnson and his GOP colleagues could have worked with the Democrats any time during the last seven years. Together, they could have addressed flaws in the ACA such as the one that tripped-up the Colbys. Instead, they obstructed any efforts to fix the law.
If Johnson really cared about people like the Colbys, he and his fellow Republicans could solve their problem immediately. He could eliminate the income-cliff over which the Colby's tumbled. He could submit a bill to gradually taper-off the tax credit for higher income workers. But no, Johnson would rather benefit politically from the Colby's misfortune. He would rather use their case as an excuse to take healthcare away from tens of millions of Americans and to gut Medicaid. He would rather throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Johnson, who has called the Affordable Care Act "the worst assault on freedom in our lifetimes", would rather sit on his hands with his nihilist Republican colleagues, hoping against hope that the ACA will fail. He would rather let the Colbys be suffering pawns in a cruel political game.
Maybe Johnson could stop playing politics and think of his constituents for a change. With last night's failure to repeal the ACA, he could actually work with Democrats to fix the law and make it stronger. Instead of whining about injustice, he could tweak the law so that he could help people like the poor Colbys
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