How health care repeal could backfire on blacks

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A year ago it seemed that the handful of ultra conservative GOP house representatives and senators were either hopelessly deluding themselves or just enjoyed engaging in mean-spirited saber rattling when they prattled on about dumping the new health care reform law. Their argument for scrapping the law was as tired as it was familiar. It was too costly, too overburdening on businesses, and too unpopular with a majority of Americans. But most of all it they simply didn’t like it because President Obama shoved it through.

The GOP neither had the numbers in the House to get close to a vote on repeal, or even to nitpick at the edges by trying to restrict, curtail, or defund parts of the law. The pending GOP takeover of the House and especially top House committees has changed that. And that change and their publicly stated announcement to zero in again on scrapping the law poses a grave threat to African-Americans.

A report by the Commonwealth Fund found that blacks and Hispanics made up nearly half of the estimated 50 million Americans with absolutely no access to affordable or health care. The GOP health care reform opponents and the health care industry lobby which includes private insurers, pharmaceuticals and major medical practitioners waged fierce war against the public option and other parts of the law that threatened their massive profits. Their great fear was that they’d have to treat millions of uninsured, unprofitable, largely unhealthy blacks.

WATCH ‘HARDBALL’ COVERAGE OF THE FIGHT OVER HEALTH CARE REPEAL:
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They will still stick to their main talking point that the law snatches the right to choose their own doctors and health plans from Americans and dump health care into the alleged slipshod, inefficient hands of government bureaucrats. This didn’t ring true then and still doesn’t change the hard reality that the number of blacks without a prayer of obtaining health care at any price has always been wildly disproportionate to that of whites — even poor whites. It has steadily gotten worse over the years.

The majority of black uninsured are far more likely than the one in four whites who are uninsured to experience problems getting treatment at a hospital or clinic. This has devastating health and public policy consequences. According to a study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies blacks are far more likely than whites to suffer higher rates of catastrophic illness and disease, and are much less likely to obtain basic drugs, tests, preventive screenings and surgeries. They are more likely to recover slower from illness, and they die much younger.

Studies have found that when blacks do receive treatment, the care they receive is more likely to be substandard than that of whites. Reports indicate that even when blacks are enrolled in high quality health plans, the racial gap in the care and quality of medical treatment still remains low. 
Private insurers routinely cherry pick the healthiest and most financially secure patients in order to bloat profits and hold down costs. American medical providers spend twice as much per patient than providers in countries with universal health care, and they provide lower quality for the grossly inflated dollars. Patients pay more in higher insurance premiums, co-payments, fees and other hidden health costs.

This argument will not wash with the GOP. Republican House leaders have tipped their hand on how they’ll come at trying to gut or outright repeal the law. South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham and House members will go for the purse strings and try to defund parts of the bill. California Rep Darrell Issa, the incoming chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will hit at what he brands the “the waste, fraud, and abuse” that he says the law is riddled with. Issa didn’t say what this supposed abuse and fraud is since the major parts of the reform law won’t take effect for several years. Fred Upton, the incoming chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wants to skip the piecemeal pecking away at the law and flatly contends that there are enough Republican and a fair number of Democrats that will vote to repeal the entire law.

There’s as yet no evidence that that’s the case, let alone that the GOP could ever muster the votes to override Obama’s veto of any repeal bill. But that won’t stop the anti-health care hardliners from trying everything they can think of to get the votes to repeal or block enactment of any part of the law they can.

Round two in the battle over health care reform promises to be nasty, divisive, and prolonged. It’s a fight that not only the Obama administration and health care reform proponents have a big stake in fighting and winning. It’s a fight that African-Americans, who remain the most needy when it comes to getting affordable health care, have just as big a stake in winning too.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com and view The Hutchinson Report on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hutchinson-report-tv