The Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as “Obamacare,” was one of the main selling points of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. When reaching out to poor and working people, the Democratic Party billed the act as a long-awaited, tremendous relief, a step towards provision of full health care to all people. However, a new analysis of census data conducted by the New York Times, shows that this is far from the truth.
As a result of the ruling in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, states can decline to participate in the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. In states controlled by Republicans, poor and working people are being held hostage through politicians’ decisions to opt out of expanding Medicaid to include larger sectors of the population. As a result, higher-income workers who are able to afford insurance are covered by the ACA, and the poorest of the poor remain eligible for Medicaid.
The ceiling for Medicaid eligibility in some states is an income as low as $11 a day. But, because 26 states have refused to participate in the Medicaid expansion, the 8 million people who now remain uncovered make up over half of minimum-wage workers, and two-thirds of all poor people of color and single mothers.
After being galvanized to come out and vote for Obama, the most oppressed communities in the country—poor and working people of color—have been cheated out of a right to health care.
Why is this occurring? As we endure more and more attacks on our rights to survive under the guise of cutbacks and a shutdown, Democrats are rushing to convince us that they are powerless in the face of right-wing retaliation, and that the blame for these glaring injustices lies entirely with the Republicans. They claim that this version of affordable health care is the best they can offer under the present circumstances.
This is grossly inaccurate—the United States is the richest country in the world, and if this government chose to allocate to research and universal health care the funds it has apportioned for warfare, health care in the United States would be a leading example in the world. In addition, in the United States, health care is provided on a for-profit basis, unlike other industrialized nations which operate on a single-payer model.
In capitalist US, health care for profit, not for people
The ACA operates within a market model, and has effectively secured a customer base for health insurance, pharmaceutical and medical supply companies instead of providing any sort of relief to the people who need that aid most desperately.
History shows that this omission in coverage is no accident. The reality of the origins of the Affordable Care Act is grim. In the early 1990s, the right wing designed coverage through mandatory insurance purchases as an alternative to progressive health care reforms proposed under Clinton. In the early 2000s, Mitt Romney introduced compulsory health insurance in Massachussetts, and the Obama administration modeled the ACA on Massachusetts’ program, instead of giving the people what they demanded: universal, single-payer health care.
While the main criticism of socialized health care is the claim that it will result in higher taxes and spending, the United States actually spends more on health care per capita than almost every European country with universal health care. In fact, at an average of $8,233 spent per capita in 2010, the U.S. government spends more than twice as much as do France, Sweden and Britain. Yet none of this extra spending actually benefits sick people. There are fewer doctors per capita in the U.S. than in European countries with universal health care, and most of U.S. government spending allocated to health care goes towards diagnostic equipment and hospital beds, which only a select few can utilize and occupy.
The ruthless exclusion of poor and working people numbering in the millions from any health care provisions is proof of the true allegiances of the Democratic party. Obamacare’s profit-oriented nature and the rabid right-wing response to what little relief it might provide show that neither capitalist party will ever stand or fight for working people in this country. The Democrats and Republicans both answer to the interests of billionaires and their corporations, and no progressive health care law will be voluntarily passed by either party unless it serves those interests.
