Medicare, Small Businesses, & The ACA

Why is it that Republicans treat Medicare so differently than they treat other kinds of health insurance? 

Take Republican Ann Marie Buerkle, who represents my district in Congress.  Buerkle's current ad shows her talking about how she takes Medicare personally, her life in health care, and her 91-year-old mother who "depends on Medicare".  She'll never let anyone change Medicare for her mom and "seniors like her", but wants to "strengthen Medicare" so it's there when her thirteen grandchildren are eligible. 

Admirable, I guess, although she voted for the Ryan budget and the Medicare cuts it contained; she now states that Ryan's plan only included those cuts because they were already part of the Affordable Care Act, even though we know that's not true.  And admirable, I guess, except that Buerkle voted, repeatedly, to repeal the ACA, which included additional coverage for preventative care for Medicare members and helps close the 'donut hole' on prescription drug costs.  It also includes incentives for hospitals to improve care for seniors, as well as other benefits for Medicare and Medicare Advantage members.

I find it hard to imagine how a nurse and a health care attorney can, with a straight face, vow to protect Medicare and also vote, repeatedly, to repeal legislation that gets us closer than ever before to having all Americans covered by some kind of health insurance policy.

Is it because seniors are such a powerful voting bloc, and the uninsured are not? 

One of the biggest reasons House members vote in favor of repealing the ACA is that it hurts small businesses. 

The current Republican thinking is that the requirements and regulations are too onerous, too expensive for these companies,  and the ACA deters them from hiring.  That thinking, of course, ignores the small business tax credits that are included with the ACA. It also forgets that small business owners are also small business employees.  In that regard, The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) researchers found in a study that:

• 30% of small business owners buy private insurance, typically in the individual market, which is the most expensive
• 25% of small business owners are uninsured
• 6% are insured through Medicaid or Medicare.

So, it seems that the people that the Republicans are trying to protect from the ACA could actually benefit from the ACA? Interesting; I haven't heard much about that in reports from the campaign trail, have you?