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ACA REPEAL WILL HURT HOSPITALS

With a month to go before President-elect Trump takes office, we’ve received a warning shot across the bow in Springfield. It came in the form of a press release from Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, and Chip Kahn, president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals. They estimate repeal of the Affordable Care Act will have a “net negative impact” on hospitals nationwide of $165.8 billion over the next few years.

“Losses of this magnitude cannot be sustained and will adversely impact patients’ access to care, decimate hospitals’ and health systems’ ability to provide services, weaken local economies that hospitals help sustain and grow, and result in massive job losses,” they added.

That’s not the only damage repealing ACA will do. Nor is it the most immediate. My wife and I have pre-existing conditions, and if the program is repealed without replacing it and Medicare is turned into some kind of a voucher program, we could very well be uninsurable. The prospect is frightening.

But the threat has wider implications. What will be the “net negative impact” of repealing the ACA in Springfield, already hard-hit economically by the ongoing stalemate in state government? Of Springfield’s three biggest employers, two are hospitals. Memorial has 3,400 jobs and St. John’s has 2,839. The state of Illinois tops the list with 17,000, so health care is an important driver of the local economy.

If repealing ACA “decimates hospitals’ and health systems’ ability to provide services,” as Pollack and Kahn predict, and “weakens local economies” like Springfield’s, how do we recover the lost jobs, income and medical care? It’s a fair question for U.S. Reps. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, and Darin LaHood, R-Peoria, both of whom say they are committed to “repeal and replace.” What are they going to replace it with, and how are they going to make good our losses? Peter Ellertsen Springfield

WHY TRUMP WON

I read your article entitled “Country blues” (James Krohe Jr., Nov. 24). After throwing up in my mouth, I then started laughing uncontrollably when I realized that you crybaby liberals still don’t get it.

Here is the bottom line, Mr.

Krohe: Trump won because he actually articulated issues that matter to my 83 percent. Stop illegal immigration, rebuild our military, take care of our vets, repeal and replace the ACA, cut both personal and corporate taxes, redo trade deals, roll back ridiculous EPA and other business-killing restrictions, create jobs, stand up for our police, destroy ISIS, and make America great again. Hillary did what every Democrat does; she practiced identity politics and, with the help of the biased press like you, tried to tell us why not to vote for Trump. That is when she actually took the time to campaign. The bottom line is that Trump outworked Hillary by a mile, and while she was doing fundraisers with her irrelevant Hollywood friends, Trump was out telling the rust belt how he was going to bring jobs back to them. My 83 percent ignored you and the rest of the biased press and voted on issues that relate to us. My 83 percent won. The people who actually made this country what it was, before 40 years of liberal entitlement programs, moral decay, political correctness, and government run amok, trying to control every aspect of our lives.

Get over it, pal. And now, when Trump does what he says he would do and it works, the map is flipped for good and the rust belt will continue to vote for Trump. You better go find a safe zone and curl up in a ball and wait for the world to end from man-made global warming. Because America is about to be great again by getting back to what made us great in the first place. And it is going to be done by my 83 percent; not in academia, not at think tanks, not in Silicon Valley, not by healing the planet from the climate change hoax, not by whiny and entitled college kids, and not by more government programs and restrictions. America is going to be remade by the hard working people of the heartland, where liberal ideas are not wanted, don’t work, and go to die. Mark Erickson Springfield