In about a week, the state of New Hampshire will mail out ballots for those voting from home in the November election. Yes, our next president and governor are on the ballot, but so is your health care.
A court case in front of the Supreme Court this fall could strip health care away from millions of Americans and increase costs for all of us. And for those who lose their jobs, there is no affordable alternative if the Affordable Care Act is brought down. Worse, instead of fighting for health care in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century, Donald Trump and Trump loyalists like Matt Mowers and Corky Messner want to end the ACA and replace it with nothing. A case that will go to the Supreme Court to overturning Obamacare one week after the election, and the odds look bad if Trump and his New Hampshire supporters win.
Medicaid expansion would end, and the insurance marketplace that covers 45,000 Granite Staters would shut down while all protections for people with pre-existing conditions would cease, too. In a second, our health care system would be in chaos, leading rural hospitals to cut services. And now, with Justice Ginsburg’s death, the ACA is very much at risk.
That is why Protect Our Care, an organization leading the fight against efforts to sabotage our health care and working to provide lower costs and better care for all Americans, urges all Granite Staters to vote as if your life depends on it – because it does.
Washington Republicans have failed to come up with a plan to fight COVID-19, refused to come to the table to pass a new relief package to help our states and municipalities fund essential services, and are sabotaging the Affordable Care Act more than six months into the crisis that has cost our nation millions of jobs.
The consequences have been disastrous. The United States accounts for 4% of the world’s population but has 21% of the deaths and 24% of the infections. More than 200,000 Americans have died. More than 6 million Americans have been infected. More than 58 million Americans have been forced to file for unemployment, and our small businesses will feel the ramifications of this crisis for years to come.
And yet Washington Republicans continue to try to make this crisis even worse by throwing our health care system into further chaos by dismantling the Affordable Care Act. If the Trump lawsuit is successful, it will strip coverage from nearly 90,000 Granite Staters, raise premiums, end protections for people with pre-existing conditions, put insurance companies back in charge, and force seniors to pay more for prescription drugs. Fifty-seven thousand Granite Staters covered under the state’s Medicaid expansion program could lose coverage – threatening one of the best tools we have in fighting the addiction crisis. More than 571,000 Granite Staters with pre-existing conditions could see the cost of their care rise, or be dropped from their insurance entirely. And support for New Hampshire’s rural hospitals would disappear, leaving them to foot the bill for millions more in uncompensated care as insurance rates plummet.
But instead of learning from his mistakes, Trump and his allies are making things worse by downplaying the danger of the coronavirus, saying it will just go away on its own and ignoring studies showing the threat to kids; refusing to listen to the experts while pushing junk science; rushing states to reopen even after an increase in deaths and infections; discouraging Americans from wearing masks; and allowing the United States to fall behind on testing.
They don’t get that you can’t fix the economy, reopen schools, or end the anxiety plaguing every New Hampshire family until the virus is under control. And they’re so hell-bent on serving the special interests and pharmaceutical companies they work for that they’re willing to rip health care from thousands of Granite Staters and raise premiums for thousands more during a pandemic.
Your future, your job, your family’s health is on the ballot. We need to send a message – put politics aside and vote for our own survival. Vote on Nov. 3 as if your life depends on it.
(Jayme H. Simões of Protect Our Care N.H. lives in Concord.)