Heller must vote to protect health care for all Nevadans

By Richard Trumka and Rusty McAllister

Friday, June 23, 2017 | 2 a.m.

Senate Republicans have released their version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) and a floor vote is expected soon. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked a rule that allows him to bypass the committee process — including public hearings or input from industry experts — and bring the AHCA directly to the floor of the Senate at any time.

Working people in Nevada are calling on Sen. Dean Heller abandon the American Health Care Act of 2017 and solve problems rather than make more.

The American labor movement has a special stake in health care. We know how illness and injury can devastate a family’s finances, which is one reason comprehensive, affordable insurance is a top priority every time we negotiate with employers. We also understand how, when it comes to your health insurance and health care, you and everyone else in your community share the same basic interests and goals.

We work to provide for our families and ourselves. It’s that simple.

Nevada is ahead of the curve when it comes to protecting and ensuring affordable access to health care. Medicaid expansion provided for in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) gave more than 200,000 Nevadans access to health care. Gov. Brian Sandoval touted the expansion, saying that “it’s working” and that it should “stay the way it is,” while Sen Heller says he wants to phase it out. Sen. Heller should be listening to Nevadans who’ve shown we want to expand health coverage rather than support policies to jeopardize that coverage.

Labor unions supported the ACA, even though it isn’t perfect, because it meant millions more Americans would gain insurance. It brought America closer to the universal health care system we’ve supported for a century. The law has flaws. In particular, it includes an unfair and unnecessary tax on good workplace health plans.

Yet the AHCA is much, much more terrible. It does everything wrong.

Why?

First, this bill is really about massive tax cuts for the wealthy few and corporations — nearly $700 billion over 10 years — paid for by even bigger cuts in our health care. The top 0.1 percent get a $207,000 yearly tax cut, while 23 million Americans would lose health insurance.

It also shifts big costs to people who can least afford it. If you are gravely ill or have a chronic condition, AHCA hits you with even higher deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance. The average Nevadan currently buying individual coverage on the ACA marketplace will end up paying an estimated $1,091 per year more for health insurance.

If you are older, have a modest income, or live in a high-cost area, the Republican plan gets even worse. It eliminates protections against having to pay too much of your income for premiums. On top of that, the bill lets insurance companies charge people over 50 as much as five times more than everyone else — what AARP estimates is an $8,400 “unaffordable age tax.”

AHCA also guts Obamacare’s requirement for large and mid-size employers to offer their full-time employees adequate, affordable health benefits or risk paying a penalty, and it makes permanent the unfair tax on middle class health benefits.

The problems go on and on. The AHCA slashes Medicaid funding, which will cripple efforts to battle the opioid epidemic, and it would shift major costs to the states. The AHCA greatly cuts back on federal funding for expanded benefits, forcing Nevada to eliminate health benefits or make painful cuts in other areas, such as raising taxes or cutting funds for infrastructure and capital improvements, education, etc.

Republicans in the Senate think they’ve got the votes. We need to make sure they’ve got it wrong.

The AHCA will devastate Nevada’s working families and the health care economy and drive up costs for everyone.

If the AHCA becomes law, Nevadans will suffer.

The ball is in the Senate’s court. It’s time for Sen. Heller to do the right thing: focus on expanding our current employment-based health insurance system, Medicare and Medicaid, and stop this rush to throw people off of insurance.

We should find ways to move America closer to health care for all, not health care for the few.

Richard Trumka is president of the AFL-CIO; Rusty McAllister is the executive secretary treasurer of the Nevada State AFL-CIO.