The unintended consequence may in the long term be a total overhaul of health care affordability and the role government plays. The red states are the most harmed by the misnamed Big Beautiful Bill, and it may be a wake-up call that leads eventually to Medicare for All.
If it does not, the red state politicians can at least make sure both Medicaid and the ACA are workable because the alternative, letting the lower-income brackets go without health care accessibility and affordability, will be politically untenable and viewed as inhumane. It will be expensive for those who have health insurance, as the cost of medical care by the emergency room will be passed on to them. covered by higher costs and bigger bills for them. Those are the reasons that the ACA, Obamacare, was passed and now has more public approval than ever.
That Democrats in Congress are making health care cuts the issue in the shutdown in a moral one....but it is also aiming at the soft belly of MAGA-run red states. Steve Rattner on Morning Joe this morning presented some extremely fascinating statistics in graphs that show the negative impact of the BBB on healthcare will hit the red states in the South the worst. Especially harmed were states that refused to expand Medicaid coverage when they had a chance in the Biden and Democratic administrations. Using Obamacare (the ACA) to fill in the gap they left in so many uninsured and now they will have the largest increase in their state ACA programs, more so than blue states, because the subsidies to make the ACA affordable have been taken away by the Big Beautiful Bill. Those of us in blue states will also feel the pain.... That is the short-term political dilemma that the GOP is finding itself in.
In the long term, the ACA will have to be replaced, because it has not resulted in the profit-driven health insurers reducing costs...and instead, the ACA is just a method to help consumers afford the private insurers' unbridled greed. The only way out is a Medicare for All kind of a program that has a huge advantage: the pool of insured becomes the whole country...an average that includes both the sick, elderly and the healthy, spreading the risk around and reducing the cost for everyone. There will come a time when Americans will realize that their fear of socialism will be eclipsed by the need to cope with the cost of modern medicine, and they will rise up and demand it. I am not sure we are there yet, but the BBB BS by an uncaring GOP may be a catalyst for voter attitude changes, it is so jarring and harmful.
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