July 19, 2017
Page 7
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O PINION
Turning Back the Clock to a Time of No Rights
Health care repeal
is a direct attack
J aniCe “J ay ” J ohnson
The health care repeal
that Republicans are push-
ing through Congress is a
direct attack on the lives
of black people through-
out the country.
Just as these right-wing
politicians are pushing us
out of the voting booth, they want
to push us out of doctor’s offices
and hospitals, further into medical
debt, and closer to the grave.
Some
think
repealing
“Obamacare” will reset the clock
to 2008. In truth, the repeal plan
being considered by the Senate
takes us back beyond 1964, be-
fore Voting Rights, Civil Rights,
and before Medicaid.
Medicaid is the program that
more than any other opened the
door to health care for African
American people in the United
States, and the lives of black peo-
ple are exactly what’s at stake in
the fight over repeal.
The legislation proposed by Re-
by
publican leaders doesn’t just gut
the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
It also aims to destroy Medicaid,
cutting a quarter of its budget and
capping funds, end-
ing the guarantee
that the program will
be funded according
to how much care is
needed and used.
This will result in
more than 22 million
We know these cuts won’t
be felt equally. Black adults are
twice as likely to get their cover-
age through Medicaid than white
adults. Although struggling people
of all races will suffer under this
health care repeal, the effects will
hit black communities hardest.
African Americans have high-
er rates of diabetes, stroke and
high blood pressure, and African
American men are twice as likely
health care is unfathomable. Many
black adults got health insurance
for the first time in their life under
“Obamacare” when many states
expanded Medicaid. Unfortunate-
ly, too many people were shut out
of these gains because some states
refused the Medicaid expansion.
When Louisiana finally opened
Medicaid to more people, there
were newspaper reports of pa-
tients crying with relief. These
The legislation proposed by Republican leaders
doesn’t just gut the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It
also aims to destroy Medicaid, cutting a quarter of
its budget and capping funds, ending the guarantee
that the program will be funded according to how
much care is needed and used.
people across the country los-
ing their coverage entirely, while
many more will lose critical ser-
vices they need - everything from
help with long-term care to cancer
treatment.
to die from prostate cancer. All of
these conditions are easily treat-
able with well managed health
care, which is what the ACA is all
about.
The cruelty of taking away
right-wing politicians want to
steal that right out of their hands.
They don’t care who lives or dies
as long as they can hand over a
giant tax break to their billionaire
and corporate donors.
Speaker of the House Paul
Ryan has tried to sell health care
repeal by calling it “freedom.”
How ridiculous!
That’s the emptiest, cruelest
version of freedom I can think of
- the freedom to go without health
care you need and can’t pay for,
the freedom to go bankrupt over
medical debt, the freedom to die.
Without insurance, families
face devastating financial con-
sequences. More than half of all
bankruptcies are due to insur-
mountable medical bills. Lack of
health insurance isn’t freedom, it
is a poverty sentence that can last
for generations.
When it comes to health care,
the Affordable Care Act didn’t get
us all the way, just as Medicaid
hasn’t either. But the ACA put us
in the right direction, and it’s that
progress the right-wing politicians
want to destroy - and that makes
them so afraid.
Janice “Jay” Johnson is the
board president of People’s Ac-
tion, a national organization ad-
vancing economic, racial, gender,
and climate justice.
Trump’s Worst Collusion is with Corporations
Billionaires
doing a lot better
than Putin
P eter C erto
I’ve always been
a little skeptical that
there’d be a smoking
gun about the Trump
campaign’s alleged
collusion with Rus-
sia. The latest news about Donald
Trump, Jr., however, is tantaliz-
ingly close.
The short version of the sto-
ry, revealed by emails the New
York Times obtained, is that the
president’s eldest son was offered
“some official documents and in-
formation that would incriminate
Hillary” and “would be very use-
ful to your father.”
More to the point, the younger
Trump was explicitly told this was
“part of Russia and its govern-
ment’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Donald, Jr.’s reply? “I love it.”
Trump Jr. didn’t just host that
meeting at Trump Tower. He also
brought along campaign manag-
er Paul Manafort and top Trump
confidante (and son-in-law) Jared
Kushner.
by
We still don’t have evidence
they coordinated with Russian ef-
forts to release Clinton campaign
emails, spread “fake news,” or
hack state voting systems.
But at the very least, the top
members of Trump’s inner
circle turned up to get intelli-
gence they knew was part of
a foreign effort to meddle in
the election.
Some in Washington are
convinced they’ve heard
of the alleged Russian meddling,
“unlike the massive effects of in-
terference by corporate power and
private wealth.”
That’s worth dwelling on.
Many leading liberals suspect,
now with a little more evidence,
that Trump worked with Russia to
win his election. But we’ve long
known that huge corporations and
wealthy individuals threw their
weight behind the billionaire.
That gambit’s paying off far
ance companies and cutting taxes
on the wealthiest by over $346
billion.
As few as 12 percent of Amer-
icans support that bill, but the
allegiance of its supporters isn’t
to voters — it’s plainly to the
wealthy donors who’d get those
tax cuts.
Meanwhile,
majorities
of
Americans in every single con-
gressional district support efforts
to curb local pollution, limit car-
Many leading liberals suspect, now with a little more
evidence, that Trump worked with Russia to win his
election. But we’ve long known that huge corporations
and wealthy individuals threw their weight behind the
billionaire.
enough already, with Virginia sen-
ator (and failed VP candidate) Tim
Kaine calling the meeting “trea-
son.”
Perhaps. But it’s worth asking:
Who’s done the real harm here?
Some argue it’s not the Russians
after all.
“The effects of the crime are
undetectable,” the legendary so-
cial critic Noam Chomsky says
more handsomely for them — and
more destructively for the rest of
us — than any scheme by Putin.
The evidence is hiding in plain
sight.
The top priority in Congress
right now is to move a health
bill that would gut Medicaid and
throw at least 22 million Ameri-
cans off their insurance — while
loosening regulations on insur-
bon emissions, and transition to
wind and solar. And majorities in
every single state back the Paris
climate agreement.
Yet even as scientists warn
large parts of the planet could
soon become uninhabitable, the
fossil fuel-backed Trump adminis-
tration has put a climate denier in
charge of the EPA, pulled the U.S.
out of Paris, and signed legislation
to let coal companies dump toxic
ash in local waterways.
Meanwhile, as the adminis-
tration escalates the unpopular
Afghan war once again, Kushner
invited billionaire military con-
tractors — including Blackwater
founder Erik Prince — to advise
on policy there.
Elsewhere, JPMorgan CEO Ja-
mie Dimon and other architects
of the housing crash are advising
Trump on financial deregulation,
while student debt profiteers set
policy at the Department of Edu-
cation.
Chomsky complains that this
sort of collusion is often “not con-
sidered a crime but the normal
workings of democracy.” While
Trump has taken it to new heights,
it’s certainly a bipartisan problem.
If Trump’s people did work with
Russia to undermine our vote, they
should absolutely be held account-
able. But the politicians leading
the charge don’t have a snowball’s
chance of redeeming our democ-
racy unless they’re willing to take
on the corporate conspirators much
closer to home.
Peter Certo is the editorial
manager of the Institute for Policy
Studies and the editor of Other-
Words.org.