Trump Has Already Cost Three Million People Their Health Care

Ever since Donald Trump entered the Oval Office he has tried to destroy the health care law. After promising better health care at a lower cost, he never came up with his own plan: he tossed that hot potato to Congress. Then he blamed them when they came up with awful plans catering to the wealthy that nobody in the country liked.

At the same time Trump has been sabotaging the law in various ways. Now his treachery has born fruit:

The percentage of U.S. adults lacking health insurance rose in the third quarter of 2017 to 12.3%, up 0.6 percentage points from the previous quarter and 1.4 points since the end of 2016. The uninsured rate is now the highest recorded since the last quarter of 2014 when it was 12.9%.

The uninsured rate, measured by Gallup and Sharecare since 2008, had fallen to a record low of 10.9% in the third and fourth quarters of 2016. However, the 1.4-point increase in the percentage of adults without health insurance since the end of last year represents nearly 3.5 million Americans who have entered the ranks of the uninsured.

Still, the uninsured rate remains well below its peak of 18.0% measured in the third quarter of 2013, prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) mandated healthcare exchanges and the associated requirement that all adults have health insurance or be subject to a fine.

Trump will claim the law itself is to blame: but it's Trump's open sabotage of the ACA that is causing the decline in the number of people covered.

Let's look at what Trump has wrought with one disease: cancer.

Based on an incidence of 455 per 100,000 people, approximately 16,000 of those who lost their coverage will contract cancer in the next year. Cancer mortality is 171 per 100,000 -- including people who have health care. When you don't treat cancer, it's almost always fatal.

Most of those 16,000 will be unable to afford treatment -- since they can't afford health insurance in the first place -- and thousands will go bankrupt trying to pay for it. And contrary to the Republican refrain of "anyone can go to the emergency room," emergency rooms don't treat cancer -- they don't do long-term radiation treatments or chemotherapy.

Without health care almost all those people are going to die, and Donald Trump will have killed them.

Cancer's not the only disease: 9% of Americans have diabetes, which means 315,000 of those who lost their health care are diabetic. About 29% of Americans have hypertension, or a million of those who lost their health care. Many of these people will have to give up their medications, and as a result will have heart attacks and strokes.

Now, those people can go to the emergency room. And they won't have insurance. So the rest of us will pick up the tab. Many of them will die, but many will survive. They'll go bankrupt paying medical bills. Many will suffer permanent brain damage or cardiac insufficiency. They'll go on disability or Social Security. And again the rest of us will pick up the tab.

In the long run Trump's spiteful blunder will cost the country untold numbers of dollars and lives. All because he's jealous of the accomplishments of a black man.