Congress is considering a bill that would cut millions of dollars from Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and the Veterans Administration health services. President Trump, U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet, and others want us to think this is cutting “waste, fraud and abuse.” But it is actually cutting real health care for real people, including our neighbors in the Upper Peninsula. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 15 million Americans will lose their health care coverage if the current reconciliation bill is passed by Congress.

If the Republicans in Congress were interesting in reducing the cost of health care, instead of making indiscriminate budget cuts, there are reasonable strategies to provide long term savings. These include such actions as reducing the price of prescription drugs and requiring less paperwork.

The most effective strategy to lower health care costs is prevention. The flu vaccine, for example, is inexpensive and keeps thousands of people out of the hospital for treatment of complications from influenza, thereby reducing the costs for hospitalization. Birth control is less expensive than the cost of prenatal care and delivery (not to mention the lifelong cost of caring for a child). If the Trump Administration were serious about lowering health care costs, they would not be cutting funding for vaccines or for trusted sources of birth control, like Planned Parenthood.

Another long-term strategy is research to find the causes and cures for diseases, which will lower the costs of health care and reduce suffering. Yet, the Trump Administration is cutting funding for health care research. The federal government has invested billions of dollars in research over many years that they are terminating before we get to know the results. It is like paying your 30-year mortgage for 29 years and then deciding to stop payments and let the bank repossess your home. This is beyond wasteful.

Why are these cuts being made? The proposed reconciliation bill does not reduce the budget deficit, rather it adds trillions of dollars to the national debt. If President Trump wants to save taxpayer dollars, he would not have a military parade on his birthday costing over $40 million, nor spend an estimated $1 billion on upgrading a luxury jet for his use, nor would he have us pay millions of dollars every weekend for his flights and Secret Service so that he can play golf.

President Trump and Rep. Bergman are making decisions that benefit themselves and their friends at the highest income levels and hurt everyone else. Perhaps, they are out of touch with ordinary people. Clearly, they don’t care about us.