Buzz
Good morning! You remember that disastrous health care bill, the one so bad that even the Republicans who ran on repealing the ACA couldn’t get it passed? Well, it's back and up for a vote today.
The previous attempt failed because it put House Republicans in a tough spot: vote against it and anger their own party, or vote in favor and risk the health and lives of thousands in their own districts. (This isn’t an exaggeration; I’ll share the stats below.)
Last night, lawmakers made a few cosmetic tweaks to the bill, changes designed to make it appear more palatable and deflect some backlash. But these changes don’t address the core issue: this is still a disastrous bill, and they all know it. This interview with Republican Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania gives a glimpse into the thought process: he admits it goes against his promises to his constituents, but he's backing it for the sake of party unity. He claims the Senate will fix the rest of it later.
So, here are the most crucial elements of the bill that its supporters are hoping you won’t catch on to:
Your insurance could become useless, even if you're not on 'Obamacare.' States can waive essential benefits requirements, which means insurers can offer low-quality plans that seem attractive at first—hello, affordable premiums!—but if something serious happens (like a bus hitting you), you might end up paying for your own treatment, hospitalization, or whatever isn’t covered. Even if you have insurance through your employer, they might pick one of these plans to save on costs. Reminder: even healthy, privileged young people (the group most likely to favor cheap, terrible insurance) can still get hit by buses.
Without essential benefits, there’s no limit to what you could pay out of pocket. If your insurance policy doesn’t cover hospitalization as an essential benefit, the law doesn’t place any cap on how much you could be forced to pay for it.
Premiums could rise by $4,000 for asthma sufferers and $140,000 for those with metastatic cancer. These are annual premiums for people buying their own insurance who have had a gap in coverage. That’s a lot of people, thanks to other provisions in the bill. The House is holding a vote without a CBO score, so there’s no official figure on how much premiums will rise. Instead, we have estimates from the partisan Center for American Progress, based on government data, showing how much more expensive these plans will be for insurers. And because healthy people won’t have to buy insurance, insurers are motivated to keep their cheap plans cheap and their expensive ones expensive.
The safety net for uninsured people won’t be able to do its job. Lawmakers are discussing “high-risk pools,” where the government covers costs for people who can’t afford insurance. But these pools are extremely expensive and the bill doesn’t allocate nearly enough money—it's short by $19 billion. High-risk pools existed in the past, and they didn’t work well then either.
The bill’s real goal is to “save” $880 billion for tax cuts. The last-minute additions of $15 billion for lowering premiums and $8 billion for pre-existing conditions don’t change the big picture. The bill mainly achieves the $880 billion savings by gutting Medicaid, which covers the poor, disabled, and people needing long-term care. Nearly half of all births in this country are paid for by Medicaid. The money saved helps repeal a 3.8 percent tax and a 0.9 percent tax currently paid by the wealthy, and the rest is for a future “tax reform” bill that will likely give even bigger cuts, mostly benefiting the rich.
Yes, people will die. This often gets brushed off—can people really die due to poor healthcare access in this great country? Here’s a small example: When Obamacare allowed states to expand Medicaid, the states that expanded coverage saved thousands of lives. In those that didn’t, there were 2,840 more deaths annually per state. Looking at the bigger picture, the best estimates suggest that if 20 million people lose their health insurance (which is an underestimate for this bill), 24,000 will die unnecessarily.
If you want a detailed breakdown of the bill, check out this rundown from Vox. With no CBO score and last-minute changes made overnight that lawmakers might not have fully reviewed, the bill is expected to go up for a vote at 2pm Eastern today. [Update: It passed.] Are they calling our bluff again? It’s tough to say, but it’s worth giving your representative a call anyway.
