Harrop: Cities, states left to cope with sabotaged Obamacare
By Froma Harrop
Social desperation tends to land on the doorsteps of the governments closest to the people. Happily for states and cities, the Affordable Care Act turned their challenging populations of sick, low-income residents into customers for local health care businesses. Unhappily, President Trump and congressional Republicans are in full sabotage mode and threatening to bus these unfortunates back to their doorsteps.
Obamacare has created an estimated 240,000 jobs in health services. These are high-paying jobs and a godsend for cities reeling from factory layoffs.
Conservative fans of federalism like to say that the government closest to the people governs best. But for all the lip service many pay to moving power from the federal to the state level, they routinely dump their messes on local authorities while depriving them of revenues.
Local governments cannot survive without money, but the Republican Congress banned them from requiring that internet merchants collect the same sales taxes that traditional stores do. Its latest tax “reforms” include ending the ability to deduct state and local taxes from federal taxable income.
But the chaos unleashed by this monkeying with Obamacare is in a class by itself. During the campaign, when states were trying to budget for the future, candidate Donald Trump offered almost no details on what his health care plan might look like. After he was elected president, he set about prying the law apart while sharing no intelligence on what might replace it.
http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/harrop-cities-states-left-to-cope-with-sabotaged-obamacare/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=f07ba53bf8-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-f07ba53bf8-228635337
