The March 9 editorial ("Harsh reality sets in for GOP health plan") was spot-on when it cautioned that "there are enough details known about the AHCA to draw some disturbing conclusions" and that "it falls well short of meeting the high expectations created by Republicans." The legislation is really a giant tax cut for some people and corporations, and a significant cut in meeting the needs of others, including the vulnerable people who are currently on Medicaid. I am disappointed with my congressman, Rep. Erik Paulsen, who was quoted in a news article the same day ("Both sides take issue with GOP health care bill") as saying that the new legislation "will help American families have access to high-quality health care." He is confusing "access" with "affordable" and trying to put lipstick on a pig. We need him and other supporters of the legislation to explain why decreased coverage, and higher costs for seniors and others, are "improvements" on the ACA.
With all that has been written comparing the Affordable Care Act (to be repealed) and the Republican proposal to replace it, there remains one very large GOP elephant in the room that has been ignored. Under the ACA, insurance companies must spend either 80 percent or 85 percent of your premium dollars on actual health care and quality improvement. That leaves them with a mere 15 percent to 20 percent of your money to pay for their overhead costs and profits. Before this rule was in place, you may have had insurance that spent less than 50 percent of your premium on health care and the rest on overhead (office space, employee wages, etc.), executive bonuses (as high as a billion dollars a year for some CEOs) and profits. The proposed replacement would return us to the bad old days. And as to the critics of the ACA who claim that Medicare for all would waste money, the overhead costs for true Medicare (before you had to pick an insurance-company middleman to manage your Medicare account), was a mere 1 percent, with 99 percent spent on health care. And, the ACA capped premium increases, and that goes away, too. So what do you think the cost of health care will do when the sky is the limit for profits?
Sadly, my family is no stranger to gun violence. In September 2003, my aunt, Shelley Joseph-Kordell, was shot and killed in the courthouse shooting at the Hennepin County Government Center. Her attorney and friend, Rick Hendrickson, survived a gunshot wound to the neck. Neither security nor armed deputies could intervene in time, because in reality, a bullet travels faster than the speed of sound, leaving zero time for heroism.
The same day the Star Tribune published his commentary, Lott also testified on behalf of the gun lobby at a Public Safety Committee hearing in the Minnesota House, which advanced two dangerous gun bills: permitless carry and Stand Your Ground. The National Research Council released findings in 2004 discrediting Lott. In fact, one of the "scientific surveys" conducted by Lott seems to have vanished completely without any evidence of so-called student volunteers, employee records, expense records, telephone records, sampling design or statistical analysis. It was also revealed that "Mary Rosh," an online blogger who claimed to be a former student corroborating Lott's "research," was in fact John Lott himself.
