Rep. Grayson finished Trib health care editorial title back in 2009

The Trib' editorial 'If you haven't had health care...' could not have a more heartless title and message. Without mentioning the numerous ways Trump and the GOP majority have undermined and degraded the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Trib promotes substituting cheaper short term insurance policies which don't qualify for requirements under the ACA which eliminate pre existing conditions and annual and lifetime benefits, but require covering all essential health benefits. That represents a return to the horrendous health insurance system that blocked 40 million Americans from proper health care, leading to bankruptcy, degraded health and unnecessary deaths for over 10% of our populous. To ponder that as "the triumph of personal choice over government diktat', is inexplicably cruel to the millions with little or no means.

Just how has the Trump administration undermined the ACA that brings the Trib to its draconian cure for the medically uninsured?

It eliminated the individual mandate penalties needed to keep overall insurance rates low. It withdrew cost cost-sharing reduction payments to insurance companies. It reduced federal advertising and enrollment assistance during 2017 that affected the 2018 open enrollment period which will lead to an additional 6.4 million people uninsured in 2019 compared with prior law

Increasing the aforementioned short term policy time limit of 3 months to one year, which the Trib applauds, will increase the number of people without minimum essential coverage by 2.5 million in 2019.

The combined effect of Trump's attacks on the ACA will increase 2019 ACA-compliant nongroup insurance premiums 18.2 percent on average in the 43 states that do not prohibit or limit short-term plans. This is not something to celebrate as the Trib does to encourage the uninsured to buy short term health insurance. It is simply the health insurance equivalent of a payday loan.

During the 2009 ACA debate in Congress, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) summed up the GOP health care plan for the 40 million shut out thusly:

"Don't get sick. But if you do, die quickly."

That still applies to today's unfinished Trib editorial title.