Trump supporters in the heartland fear being left behind by GOP health plan

Janice Phelps, a 60-year-old disabled factory worker in Evansville, Indiana, knows how expensive healthcare is. Each month, shots for her severe asthma cost $3,000. Quarterly injections for knee pain cost $3,200.

Medication for depression costs $900. She has had seven back surgeries, two shoulder surgeries, and two knee surgeries since 1985. The largest public health programs in America – Medicaid and Medicare, which aid the poor and the elderly – paid for nearly all of it.

Yet, those programs are now threatened by the men she voted for: Donald Trump and former Indiana governor Mike Pence.

“I’m all in favor of repealing it,” she said about Republicans’ push to do away with the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. But, she said when you talk about cutting Medicaid: “I don’t agree with that at all.”

Dramatic changes to Medicaid – the scheme to help poorer Americans get healthcare – are just part of the reforms in a Republican bill leaders are trying to force through Congress at lightning speed. However, since it was introduced last Monday, the American Health Care Act has met opposition from the left, significant sections of the Republican party, and a slate of doctor, hospital and patient associations. It’s been called a “legislative orphan appealing to no one”.

This is Pence’s home state. When he was governor, he took political advantage of Obamacare and used federal funds it made available to provide healthcare for half a million of the poorest people in his state.

Yet here, in a rural corner of Indiana where Trump won 40,000 votes to comfortably beat Hillary Clinton by 10,000, many low-income people are covered by a program Pence put in place only two years ago and which Republican proposals would severely cut.

“But none of them seems to be looking at the root causes of the increases in costs for medical care; so they are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

What are the root causes, and what can be done about them?

I'll just give a hint: my mother drank or smoked very little in her life, and is now 97. She is a Type II diabetic, who for more than a decade has required daily insulin shots. She has had several hospitalizations over the years - at least four or five - and now lives in an adult care home. The cost of all this care must now total upwards of three or four hundred thousand dollars, and goes up seven or eight thousand dollars a month.

Everyone does not live to be 97, but everyone expects to have this sort of health care. One thing that drives up the cost of health care is our expectations.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condemning people for having those expectations, but we need to face the fact that our expectations are going to mean that we are going to have to prioritize health care at the expense of some other things. The only place I can see us getting that sort of money is by cutting the military budget, which is - by far - the largest in the world.

Why so many surgeries?
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These joint-restructuring operations often fail and need to be redone. Medical massage therapists see this all the time. The attachments between bone and muscle are re-routed, the stresses are redirected and the body isn’t designed to function as usual with these changes.

I have some foot anomalies. There are surgical corrections on offer. They may work for some, but they can cause secondary problems. Until I am absolutely immobilized, I will not choose surgery and even then, I may not.

I have seen poor results from supposedly simple bunion corrections. Just from a mechanical standpoint, you can see the issues that can result.

Google IV solutions, you can get a complete one on Amazon for about $15, in the hospital its $800. My last upper endoscope, I didn’t even get a IV, they just shot the Versed into a IV pic with a huge loaded needle. Yet I had to be dehydrated for the procedure. Not even offered a bottle or glass of water after. Just woke up said your done, get dressed and go home, doc will call with results. What was once a every 2 yr procedure is now a every 3 yr, Barrett’s Esophagus is a pre-cancer caused by PPI’s which means drugs like Nexium that was never meant to be a life long drug for GERD. Just short term.

Docs get kick backs for scripting for the latest fad drug, Big Pharma needs their monopoly broken up with the Stevens Act. FDA needs fixing, to many BAD drugs are making their way to market. And your doc is not warning you about them. I have Medwatch, and I get recalls, and new drugs in development, most would kill you if you looked up the side effects. If they didn’t addict you. Yet there they are advertising the crap on TV.

Crestor became the #1 Cholesterol drug with a multi-million $$ ad campaign, not that it worked better than Provachal at a fraction of the cost. In fact Crestor has a lot more side effects than the older Provachal.

No one says a word about OP drugs. EVERY ONE is FDA FLAGGED as dangerous, or Black Boxed which is the highest warning for Bone Cancer for Forteo. Reclast has a NO Asthma patient warning that is ignored, and the deaths from these drugs are hidden in the stats for broken hip complications. 1 Fosamax 10 mg pill and I’m in the ER with A-Fib.

Misdiagnosis is a large problem too. Which means you get treated for something you don’t have while the real culprit goes untreated.

Or you have a DUMB PCP who thinks they are an Endocrinologist, who has 4 extra yrs of training. Your Blood Sugar runs high because you took Vitamin C, Oh, you need a diabetes med. Come get this script, NO A1C1 or Ketone test, not test meter, but take this NOT a beginners drug that will put you in a diabetic coma or kill you. Since my eldest is a Type 2 I know what he has to do, eat, and what meds and testing he has to do. I have an ENDO for my thyroid, I should have been sent to the Specialist if a Blood Sugar issue was suspected. I had to have a hissy fit to get a test meter with 1 test strip per day. All I did was test, didn’t fill her script, A1C1 was 5.5 well under what they consider a diabetic. Glimipride is not a beginner’s drug, Metformin is the beginners drug.

Treating the 1.33 Million Chronic Pain Patients who have no cure for their conditions like street junkies and sending them to Pain Management is STUPIDITY, PM are just internist or GP’s not Specialist in ICC Bladder disease or Peripheral Neuropathy, that is a Neurologist field. And Specialist should be the one treating the patient, not some untrained in that field doc. Why do I have to pay $300 co-pay to P in a bottle for a month of pain med that barely works because DUMBO and his ACA mandated a 75% decrease in pain med scripting.

No bed in the hospital when you go in for BP issues, and you spend days in the ER at ER cost. $60K for 3 days. It is all a RACKET.

since 1985? She likely is being misinformed by the reporters, if it is repealed she will still have coverage.

They are trying to tell her that they want to cut it in general so as to say she is going to be cut.

I am in favor of cutting some people from disability, did you see that judge that was giving disability to everyone overriding the earlier denials?

People getting disability for things that wouldn’t keep you from working.

I do wish that people who do get a disability that cuts their wage making ability significantly could get partial disability coverage. For example, early onset of brain disorders.

I had foot surgery at a local hospital last summer and my insurance paid for it. When I woke up and they sent me home I noticed this godawful shoe on my foot that there was no way I could walk on. We have tile floors and I almost slipped and fell because of the shoe. When I went to the doc a week later I asked didn’t they have something else. They said that was the shoe my insurance paid for. I asked if they had anything else I could purchase. $10 and I could walk again.
The shoe my insurance paid for could have sent me to the hospital with a bad fall which would have been quite a bit more expensive than maybe a dollar more for a better shoe. I just shook my head.

wife was having a baby and shopped for a plan to take effect Jan 1.....so knowing the baby was coming chose the lowest out of pocket one available. And now the baby is here as he was just born. $440 bucks for just her....no dental. Or $750 for mom and baby with dental. Dental must now be included.....must because all children, must have it. Even newborns. So much for choice. I chose a plan with a low out of pocket considering the life event that was happening. The deductible is $1750 per, x2 ppl for the policy and and out of pocket max of $3500 per, x2 ppl.

So I pay $9000 a year and soak up the first $3,500 in medical expenses, with some minor exceptions. Such as getting a prescription filled, will kick in I believe before I reach the deductible. After the deductible is reached I have a co-pay of 20% until a total of $7,000 out of pocket is reached.

So in a nutshell I have to pay the first $12,500 before the insurer starts shouldering the costs in a meaningful way. And in this instance, will have to pay $16,000 this year.

That’s just for mom and the baby. I can’t afford insurance.

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