Don't ignore the sabotage of ACA

Gordon Szymanski needs more research before disparaging people "spouting off" about health care reform as sloppy. Insurance companies dropping out and premiums and deductibles rising are because Paul Ryan, et. al., have sabotaged the ACA by making Medicaid expansion optional and withholding funding - funds to stabilize the insurance market while it absorbed previously uninsured people (without it companies leave); funds to subsidize insurance purchase for low income people (without it premiums and deductibles rise); funds to expand Medicaid (without it many remain uninsured).

This is the same Paul Ryan who stated that at college kegger parties, he used to fantasize about dismantling Medicaid. When my mother went into a nursing home, she needed Medicaid. Those disabled through no fault of their own need Medicaid. People voted to fix ACA problems, not heartlessly eliminate health care.

Of course the ACA isn't going to work as intended with major parts of it decimated. When President Obama promised lower premiums and deductibles with more people covered, he foolishly assumed that Republican members of Congress would comply with the law's provisions and funding, not sabotage it. When he said people could keep their health insurance if they liked it, he really should have stipulated that junk insurance policies excluding essential services would no longer be available, whether you liked them or not.

The ACA needed to be fully funded and improved, not distorted by the abomination of a law that is presently moving through Congress. That law does not replace the ACA but rather takes a meat ax to Medicaid, cripples Medicare, and gives a fat tax break to the .01 percent. This situation has people purposely breaking a carefully crafted attempt to address an old health care nonsystem that wasn't sustainable; then complain when what they broke didn't work. That's what's sloppy.

Barbara Muehlhausen

Schaumburg