WHY NO NATION MAY AGAIN PUT THEIR TRUST IN US LEADERSHIP

….Donald Trump has no regard for those Americans with medical issues. 

 

Because of the latest Trump executive orders, it will be years before America’s allies again trust US leadership.

 

President Trump signed another executive order last week that will do an “end-around” on Obamacare (ACA).  This is accomplished by making it easy for Americans and small businesses to buy health insurance with lower prices.  But as it was before the ACA, some or many of these policies will be useless for older or sicker Americans, and all will have fewer benefits and virtually no government protections.

 

In other words, Americans will be back to the same insurance policies that were prevalent before the ACA.

 

Yes, Americans will be able to better afford health care coverage.  But many of the policies will be useless to those with serious medical issues.

The real reason for all of this is not to fix the problems with Obamacare.  Trump’s real issue is that he has no regard for those Americans with medical issues.  His real focus is to reverse any and all policies of the Obama administration.  This was a central Trump promise made during last year’s presidential campaign.  And remember, Trump was the "Birther-in-Chief" for 5 years.

 

The Trump White House and its allies portrayed the president’s latest move as wielding administrative powers to accomplish what congressional Republicans have failed to achieve.

 

What you are not hearing is that the critics, who include state insurance commissioners, most of the health-insurance industry and mainstream policy specialists, they predict that these kinds of coverages will have damaging ripple effects.  They will drive up costs for consumers with serious medical conditions and will prompt more insurers to flee the law’s marketplaces.

Part of Trump’s action, these critics say, will spark court challenges over its legality.

 

The Trump order expands the availability of short-term insurance policies.  These policies offer limited benefits for people between jobs or young adults who no longer are eligible for their parents’ health plans. The Obama administration ruled that short-term insurance may not last for more than three months, while Trump wants to extend that to nearly a year.  (One of the few positives from Trump's orders.)

 

In the signing ceremony in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, surrounded by supportive small-business owners, cabinet members and a few Republicans from Capitol Hill, the president spoke in his characteristic superlatives about the effects of his action and what he called “the Obamacare nightmare.”

 

The reality is that because of the activities of the Trump administration in sabotaging Obamacare, a recent political cartoon showed the three-legged stool that has defined how the ACA was originally structured.  In the cartoon, it shows a caricature of President Trump cutting off one of the three ACA legs with a chain saw as he is yelling that: “I told you that Obamacare was in a death spiral!”

 

It isn’t really, but it is what Trump is pushing to make happen.

 

It is true that Obamacare could have been fairly easily fixed.  But because the Republican US Congress had attempted almost 60 times to repeal “Obamacare”, they are now stuck with not trying to fix America’s health care problems, so they feel obligated to destroy it.

 

These latest moves have shown that Trump and the GOP now own the nation’s health care issues, lock, stock and barrel.  They can no longer blame Obama and Obamacare.

 

When a new president comes on board, the new guy is usually given a short honeymoon.  That’s what Trump had when he first came to the White House, but that period is over.  When we get further down the road, and people start finding out that Trump’s moves have actually taken away their health care, they will probably start wishing they had Obamacare back. 

 

Trump himself has said that “this is only the beginning of the regulatory work coming from federal agencies”.  He then promised, “even more relief and more freedom” from the ACA rules. But leading GOP lawmakers are eager to move on from their unsuccessful attempts this year to abolish the central facets of the 2010 law. Trump said that “we are going to pressure Congress very strongly to finish the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.”

We'll see what the law-makers are willing to sign-up for against their own constituents.

 

In many ways, many Democrats in Congress are just waiting to see how America responds to having their health care taken away.

 

A senior administration official, on the condition of anonymity, before Trump signed the latest order said that the policy changes the order sets in motion will require agencies to follow normal procedures.  These are involved procedures for writing new rules and soliciting public comment. That means new insurance options will definitely not be available in time for coverage beginning next January, he said.

 

The Trump order also produced predictable reactions in Congress, with Republican leaders praising the move and Democrats accusing the White House of sabotaging the law.

 

The new ability from the order for the selling of health plans from state to state without separate licenses, this has long been a Republican desire.

 

 

Only a half-dozen states before the ACA was passed in 2010, as well as since then, have passed laws permitting insurers to sell health policies approved by other states.

 

But as of this summer, “no state was known to actually offer or sell such policies,” according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.  The main reason, experts say, is insurers’ difficulty in arranging networks of doctors and other providers of care far from their home states.

 

The point is, we are just now starting to see how much damage this latest Trump decision is going to incur.

 

The real issue is that we will now be able to see what this, and the following Trump orders will do to the country and to the trust of other nations in the United States as a world leader:

 

For instance, what will be the effects of:

·       Pulling out of the TPP?

·       Pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement?

·       Approving the Keystone Pipeline?

·       Going after and renegotiating NAFTA?

·       De-Certifying the Iran accord?

·       The Selection of a conservative SCOTUS justice?

·       Trump’s past dealings with the Russians?

And many more.

 

Just stay tuned as other countries are saying that after having Trump as a US president, many of these other countries will take many years to again trust US leadership.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017