Mike Hersh

Mike’s views are his own and don’t necessarily reflect PDA’s

If you or your loved ones got sick or injured tomorrow, could you afford to get necessary health care? Could you even find a hospital or specialist you need? Trump and his lock-step Republican enablers made the answer “no” for those questions. Make no mistake, our health care and our very lives are on the ballot.

Republican recklessness endangers children and adults

Trump and his lockstep Republicans’ top priority, the first legislation they introduced in Congress,  was HB1, aka “the Big Billionaire Handout.” This law slashed Medicaid so deeply that it will throw about 10 million of us off our health insurance according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). 

The extreme right wing Republicans then refused to renew enhanced Affordable Care Act funding. Because of their cruelty and callousness, average health insurance premium payments skyrocketed 58 percent and deductibles rose 37 percent. Enrollment in coverage fell 13 percent nationally. It was much worse in some states, 32 percent in Ohio. Just when American families hoped things couldn’t get any worse, health insurance corporations announced plans to hit us with another median 15 percent increase for 2027.

Trump has a con, not any kind of “plan”

In 2020 Trump promised a full health care plan “within two weeks”. Four years later, asked about it on a debate stage, he said he had “concepts of a plan”. Trump lied and lied about health care. He and his wealthy cronies have the care they need. The rest of us? Not so much. 

Trump and his fellow Republican ideological extremists slashed our health care including funding and personnel at agencies we rely on.  to control and prevent diseases, test our drugs for safety and efficacy, even research to find cures for diseases including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and dementia.

Trump’s and the Republican Party’s disdain for the everyday American family is clear. A decade of promises, but no plan. Just death dealing cuts. Trump is a con man, the entire Republican Party is in on the con, and your health is on the chopping block to pay for enormous tax cuts for billionaires

All around the world, less-wealthy countries that the US have the answer: a national health plan that covers all the health care anyone needs. In the US, that policy is called the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, legislation that would save tens of $billions and 10,000s of lives each year.

We need Expanded and Improved Medicare for All (MFA)

We must reverse every one of the Trump Republican attacks on healthcare, but that’s not enough. We must defend and expand Medicaid, Medicare, and even the ACA. That’s not enough either. We must enact Medicare for All to save lives and tax dollars. That’s only possible with strong Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. 

A 2020 Lancet study by Yale researchers estimated that MFA would save more than $450 billion a year and most importantly 68,000 lives a year. Its lead author informally advised Senate sponsor Bernie Sanders’s office on this essential legislation. The need is clear: We’re already paying more than enough to provide all of us with all necessary care.

Even though the U.S. spends the most on health care per capita on health care, we get mediocre results, ranking last among wealthy nations in the Commonwealth Fund’s Mirror, Mirror 2024 report. Profiteering, endless and needless bureaucracy, advertising, and other overhead costs us money and lives.

Medicare for All would end medical bankruptcy, a scandal in America. It would free workers to take the best job available or start a new business, instead of keeping them locked to their current employer. It would lift the heavy burden of health insurance off employers’ backs. This would let American industry fairly compete against global rivals who are free from this crushing weight because their nations enjoy rational, reasonable health plans that cover everyone.

Risking our health and lives

Trump entrusted quack Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lifelong science denier, to administer our health care programs as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary. Exacerbating those threats to our health and lives, Elon Musk’s DOGE and other Trump extremists slashed about 20,000 essential employees from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

Crazy con man Kennedy terminated all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, endangering our children’s health. Fortunately, for now, a federal court has blocked some, but not all of those reckless policies. Meanwhile, thanks to “Mr. Measles” Kennedy’s foolishness, that easily preventable is harming and killing children and adults. This, in a country that declared Measles eliminated in 2000.

Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court majority, confirmed by the right wing rubber-stamp Republican Senate, overturned Roe v. Wade. This after every one of his appointees (and some earlier extremist appointees) swore under oath that they wouldn’t. Now, women are dying because of it.

ProPublica reported on Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, two Georgia women whose deaths state reviewers deemed preventable. More women may have already died due to Trump’s and right wing Republican’s extreme intolerance and theocratic tendencies. Other deaths will follow.

OB-GYN residency applications fell 10.5 percent in states with total bans. Fewer OB-GYNs means more danger for every woman. Women all across America are suffering and risk dying because of Trump’s and the Republican Party’s hateful, misogynistic, theocratic extremism.

Ironically, not a single passage in the Bible outlaws abortion. Trump himself almost definitely paid to abort, but he still incites division by preaching against it. So much for “pro-life” and “family values.” Right wing Republican anti-choice policy is misogyny, not pious Christianity.

To my friends on the left

You’re right that some elected Democrats have ties to insurers and drug companies. There are flaws in the ACA. Craven, corrupt, or clueless Democrats stubbornly oppose Medicare for All. Much of this is due to the flood of corporate money and Super PACs corrupting influence unleashed by the right wing extreme Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and related decisions.

Democrats keep reintroducing a constitutional amendment to curtail corruption. Trump and his regressive Republican majority perpetuate and grift off of wholesale political corruption. There are real differences between the major parties on campaign finance, and health care as well. 

As the Guardian reports, “[O]ver half  of the House Democratic caucus has co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation, and Democratic Senator Andy Kim introduced legislation on Tuesday that would enroll all children into Medicaid until the age of 26, while Republicans passed drastic healthcare cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act [sic], including nearly $1 billion in cuts to Medicaid and allowing Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire.” 

We don’t have enough support for MFA in the Senate yet, but help is on the way, if we make it so. Troy Jackson in Maine, like Dr. El-Sayed, is championing for Medicare for All, as is Angie Nixon in Florida. We can elect other champions like Minnesota’s courageous Attorney General Keith Ellison who has used the law to protect patients’ rights.

This is a do-or-die crisis for our democratic republic. This is not the time to register disapproval. Your vote is too important to sit out or use as a protest. There are huge and critically important differences between the major parties. Not a single House or Senate Republican has ever cosponsored MFA legislation.

Right after the election, Progressive Democrats of America will ask for your help demanding people-first policies from the new Congress, including Medicare for All. We’d prefer working with Democratic majorities rather than struggling against right wing extremists. Join with us building a massive Blue Wave.

To moderates, independents, and swing voters—especially rural voters

Consider the questions I asked at the top of this article. Also these concerns: Can you afford your health insurance premiums and deductibles? Are they higher than they were? Did your local hospital close, or is at risk of closing? 

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has serious flaws. It costs too much and fails to cover everyone. After all, it was patterned on the right wing Heritage Foundation’s proposal. Whatever we may think of it, the ACA put the United States on record recognizing the responsibility to help everyone get the care they need.

The ACA should be much more robust, but has achieved considerable progress toward delivering health care to tens of millions. This, largely through expanded Medicaid and free clinics for less affluent Americans. Also it protects people with pre-existing conditions, makes insurance affordable for many, and so on.

Even so, Trump called the ACA “lousy,” and his cultist Republicans in Congress repeatedly tried to gut or repeal it, despite having no alternative. Despite Trump’s serial lies claiming he did have a plan. There’s a clear party-line difference. Democrats want to lower your costs and keep your hospital open. Republicans offer lies and cons, not solutions. They remain intent on slamming us in reverse on health care. 

Trump and Republicans keep betraying rural America. Their HB1 legislation’s meager rural hospital fund will offset less than one-third of its rural Medicaid cuts, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).

Rural hospitals were already struggling. 48% of rural hospitals operated at a financial loss in 2023. 92 rural hospitals have closed their doors or been unable to continue providing inpatient services over the past 10 years. Rural hospitals lose money on several critical service lines, including behavioral health, pulmonology, obstetrics, and burns and wounds.

86 percent of Kansas hospitals are at risk of closing. Texas has 50 hospitals at risk of closing. In Georgia, St. Mary’s Sacred Heart in Lavonia shut its labor and delivery unit and cited the congressional Medicaid cuts. Michigan’s Sturgis Hospital closed in June.

In Maine, MaineHealth voted to close the maternity unit at Lincoln Hospital, the state’s 12th closure since 2015. Iowa’s MercyOne Clinton is ending labor and delivery, and a Public Citizen report flags nine Ohio hospitals at heightened risk.

A National Partnership analysis finds three Alaska hospitals with maternity units at risk. As Michigan’s hospital association chief put it, “cuts to funding are cuts to care”. Rural voters trusted Trump with their votes and gave him his victory. He repaid them by putting their children’s lives in danger.

We all have to vote, mobilize other people to vote, and elect decent, humane Democratic candidates to the U.S. House and Senate, governorships, and state legislatures, as well as other state and local offices all across the country. Remember, they’re not perfect, but they’re all running to defeat reckless Republican Trumpists.

What’s at stake in these elections: health and lives

The choice couldn’t be more clear. Every single Democrat supports science-based health solutions. Trump, his cabinet, and his other top appointees simply don’t. Every Republican backs Trump’s and his misbegotten, corrupt administration’s ongoing sabotage of our health care and health protections. Every Congressional Republican is complicit in looting our treasury and handing over our money to billionaires, putting our families at risk.

We have exemplary, highly qualified candidates to support. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and public health expert, in Michigan. Dr. Amy Acton, her state’s former health director, for governor in Ohio. Sensible Senate candidates Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, James Talarico in Texas and other qualified candidates are running against unhinged right wingers.

Bottom line: We must defeat every single right wing Republican Trumpist grifter. We have to stop them from funneling our tax money, intended to support programs to protect our health and lives, to rich elites. If the Trumpists win, they’ll only deliver unaffordable insurance premiums, shut down more hospitals, outlaw reproductive care, and ban vaccines. All this while offering us no plan to protect us or save lives.

Vote for and work to elect all Democrats and defeat every Republican on the ballot as if your life and health depend on it. Because they do.