Health insurance crisis needs action
The United States is in the middle of a health insurance crisis, and action is being blocked in the U.S. Senate because of rules and politics.
The latest bill is reportedly dead because Senate Republicans are disunited.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a health bill earlier this year — the American Healthcare Act — and sent it to the Senate, where it has gotten little consideration.
President Donald Trump has urged Congress to pass a bill, lobbying the senators personally and pledging to sign the bill when it gets to his desk.
Louisiana’s two senators, Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, have both been active in trying to get something done, and they are to be commended.
The successful House action shows that the complex Affordable Care Act, also know as Obamacare, passed with only Democratic votes, can be untangled, even if it does take several steps.
“Obamacare was designed to collapse,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said earlier this month during an appearance on “The Mike Gallagher Show.”
“It was designed to make sure employers would drop coverage because it’s too expensive, that exchanges would fail and the government would come in and take it over and you’d have single payer health care.”
Kennedy has said that “unfair treatment” of Louisiana under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s original bill would have cost our state $2 billion.
That problem was resolved, but then McConnell’s last bill collapsed last week.
Because of Senate rules and the disunity of the Republican Party, nothing is getting done.
We need immediate action, and the U.S. Senate needs to get that message from the American people.