New information has now surfaced on the Republicans' attempt to health care away from millions of Americans.
The new "plan," if one can call it that, is to leave the Obamacare framework in place and then just make it shittier.
Here are some key points as reported by
Slate:
1) Instead of providing Americans tax credits to buy insurance based on their age, as the House bill does, the Senate would offer them based on “financial need”—which is more or less how Obamacare works. But under the GOP’s proposal, fewer Americans would qualify for help. Under the Affordable Care Act, households can receive insurance subsidies if they earn up to 400 percent of the poverty line. Senate Republicans would lower that threshold to 350 percent. Subsidies will also be smaller for those who still qualify.
The writer of the article volunteers that he is not sure who this would please.
The answer of course is that it would please the ancient demon to which Republicans have apparently pledged their allegiance, and their very souls.
Or it could be to please their insurance company donors. Kind of the same thing really.
2) The Senate bill eliminates all of Obamacare’s taxes except the “Cadillac tax” on expensive health plans. This will please the medical device makers, investors, high earners, and insurance companies that were taxed by the ACA.
Yes but it will also dramatically cut the funding that the health care law would need to survive, essentially ensuring that it will ultimately fail.
Good planning.
3) It rolls back Obamacare's Medicaid expansion “more gradually than the House bill,” according to the Post, though how much more gradually is unclear. Senate Republicans have been haggling over whether to phase out the expansion over as little as three years or as many as seven—but the final outcome would be the same either way. Meanwhile, it sounds like the Senate is going to run with its plan to impose even more draconian spending cuts on Medicaid over the long term by capping per-patient spending, then increasing funding more slowly each year than the House would.
And here is where more Americans get left to die on their own without access to health care.
Can't have a GOP health care plan that doesn't kill people, now can we?
4) What about consumer protections? The House bill notoriously allowed states to opt out of Obamacare's insurance regulations, such as rules barring carriers from discriminating against patients with pre-existing conditions or requiring them to cover certain services. Sensing that it might be politically suicidal to strip cancer and heart patients of their protections, Senate moderates have reportedly resisted going down that path. Right now, it's unclear who won the argument.
And with that the Republicans do away with any pretense of wanting to help more people get access to health care, or that they support their ability to keep it when they need it most.
This is Republican politicians, with some the best health care available in the world, looking down at the masses and urinating on the sick and elderly standing below.
But wait, there's more.
5) The Senate bill would kill funding for Planned Parenthood but wouldn't bar the government from subsidizing private insurance that pays for abortions, which will infuriate religious conservatives.
Well if Lisa Murkowski wants to save her chances of being reelected she will have to vote no to killing funding or Planned Parenthood, and I cannot imagine that too many arch conservatives are going to support a bill that allows the subsidizing of abortions, which would suggest that this bill is dead in the water.
But, perhaps not.
Courtesy of
WaPo:
Aides stress that the GOP plan is likely to undergo more changes to garner the 50 votes Republicans need to pass it.
The opposition to this bill is almost overwhelming with
67% opposing it.
Just take a look at the protests outside of Mitch McConnell's office today.
Does not get much more impassioned than that.
Look if they manage to pass this bill, it will be the undoing of the Republican party.
Once they put their brand on it they can no longer blame the lack of coverage on Obamacare, nor can they suggest that they have any better ideas than the ones presented by the Democrats.
In fact the passing of this bill will likely someday be touted as the event which ushered in the start of single payer health care in America.
Though for me that credit will always go to President Obama, who laid the groundwork necessary to provide Medicaid for all.
