This guest op-ed was published by the Tampa Tribune on Aug. 7, 2015:
In my Central Florida U.S. House district, Obamacare has cut the number of uninsured by one-third in a single year. The effects are so dramatic that you would have to be blind not to see it. (And, fortunately, Obamacare covers that.)
The government just released county-by-county statistics on health insurance. A year ago, 25 percent of my district was uninsured. Today, the figure is 17 percent.
In just 12 months, one-third of my uninsured constituents obtained health coverage. In other words, 50,000-plus more of them can now see a doctor when they are sick and get the care that they need to stay healthy and alive.
The first few years of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) set the table for the striking expansion of coverage this year. The first phase prohibited insurance companies from denying coverage to 40 million Americans with existing health conditions. It has prohibited insurers from charging women more than men for the same policies. It has allowed people to change jobs, start businesses and even choose to leave the workforce without worrying about losing their health coverage.
But Obamacare’s greatest accomplishment is that millions of Americans are now getting the health insurance they need. It has encouraged the development of insurance exchanges, which have lowered prices and offered more options.
And through those exchanges, it has provided “affordability credits,” which confer huge discounts for families earning up to $88,000 a year (for a family of four).
Those credits, and the employer mandate, are the main reasons why the number of uninsured in my district has plunged.
Nationwide, before Obamacare took effect, an estimated 47 million Americans were not insured. Since then, 16.4 million have gotten insurance, dropping the nationwide uninsured rate to 13.2 percent. Minority and low-income households are seeing the largest increases in the percentage of those insured. Until this year, 40 percent of Florida Hispanics were uninsured. Today, that number is much lower.
Now, millions of people are seeing doctors, some for the first time in decades. Diseases are being diagnosed. Conditions are being treated. Suffering is being alleviated. Lives are being saved. It’s working.
There still are about 100,000 people in my district who lack health coverage. The primary reason for this is the Republican Florida Legislature’s stubborn refusal to accept the federal government’s money to expand Medicaid to 1 million-plus Floridians. Instead, our federal tax money ends up in California and New York, while good people like my constituent Charlene Dill suffer and die.
Even the chamber of commerce has attacked this senseless and callous misjudgment.
Beyond that, the obvious next step toward lowering the number of uninsured down to 0 percent is a true “public option,” meaning the opportunity for everyone (not only Medicare and Medicaid recipients, and federal employees) to choose to obtain their coverage from the government.
To close the gap now, I am reintroducing my bill in the House of Representatives to open Medicare to anyone who wants to buy into that program. My bill opens Medicare to Americans under the age of 65, whose premiums would be determined by which of six age groups in which they belong. By some reckoning, that would be the most affordable health coverage available (costing barely $100 per month for children, for instance).
The Affordable Care Act is doing exactly what it promised to do. More Americans can get the health care they need, and health costs are coming under control.
Thank goodness that the GOP’s blind obsession with repealing Obamacare failed. Now it’s time to take the next steps and provide even more affordable options to the dwindling number of Americans who have not yet been able to take advantage of the program’s benefits.
Tikkun olam. (Hebrew for “heal the world.”)
U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, a Democrat, represents Florida’s 9th Congressional District. He also is a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
