June 23, 2017

My Thoughtful Critique of Trumpcare

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Avik Roy has a request:

OK, here’s my Top 5 list:

  1. Medicaid: The Senate bill slashes spending on Medicaid in order to cut taxes on the rich. This is a cruel and unnecessary tradeoff for the richest country in the history of the world.
  2. Death Spiral: It eliminates the individual mandate; reduces subsidies for the poor; reduces benchmark plans to an actuarial value of 58 percent; and increases deductibles and copays. Whatever instability Obamacare currently has, this will make it far, far worse.
  3. Essential Health Benefits: Like the House bill, the Senate bill makes it easy for states to cut essential health benefits, which motivates insurers to offer low-end policies for the working poor that are worthless—but only if you read the fine print.
  4. More Uninsured: It will lead to tens of millions fewer people having health coverage. CBO will provide an exact number in a few days, but we already know it’s going to be big.
  5. Lifetime Caps: Guts protections against annual and lifetime caps, and because of the way the bill is written, it’s likely to do this even for employer insurance, not just for the individual market.

There’s more, like the substantial increase in premiums for older workers and the quiet kickback to insurance company CEOs. And what are the benefits? Unless you’re rich or you really, really want to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, it’s hard to see any.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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