Health Care 'Access' is Not the Same as 'Coverage'
Watching top Republicans explain their proposed Affordable Care Act replacement can make you wonder who hijacked the English language.
For example, if you're like me, you might have been shocked by the news that 24 million fewer Americans will have health insurance by 2026 if the Republican-proposed alternative passes, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office -- including 14 million fewer people in the next year alone.
But that's OK, say Republican congressional leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, already had declared such gloomy outlooks to be a "bogus" metric. It's not "coverage" that counts, he said; it's "access."
"What matters is that we're the lowering costs of health care and giving people access to affordable health care plans," Ryan said in a news conference. Ryan, a self-described "policy wonk," was excited.
He loves the mere sound of words like "freedom," "choice" and "access" even when the reality of "access" amounts to having the freedom to be offered decent health insurance but also being too poor to buy it.
And he's not alone. "Insurance is not really the end goal here," Office of Budget and Management Director Mick Mulvaney later told NBC. "We're choosing instead to look at what we think is more important to ordinary people: Can they afford to go to the doctor?"
OK, call me old-fashioned but I thought being able to afford to go to the doctor is why we have insurance.
But, no, said White House Chief Economic Adviser Gary Cohn to host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday about the prospect of millions losing their health insurance: "it's not just about coverage, it's about access to care. It's about access to be able to see your doctors."
So where did I get the idea that the goal was coverage? Maybe President Donald Trump had something to do with that when he promised a Republican plan that would provide "insurance for everybody."
But he also said in a White House meeting with House Republicans after the Grand Old Party's proposed legislation was unveiled, that it "will lower costs, expand choices, increase competition and ensure health care access for all Americans."
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