Harold Pollack – healthinsurance.org:
How and why did Republicans propose such a politically damaging plan in the first place? I have been studying and practicing health policy for more than twenty years. I have never seen a less-professional, more shambolic legislative process than the one Republicans are now pursuing.
From a political perspective, Obamacare has never been more popular, now that its survival is genuinely in doubt. Virtually every provision of its Republican alternative is disliked. Most Americans, including most Trump supporters, support ACA’s Medicaid expansion as it is. Huge majorities support ACA’s higher taxes on Americans making more than $250,000 to support health care, support ACA’s more generous subsidies to people of modest incomes who have trouble affording coverage.
The million-dollar question – why? Why are Congressional Republicans pushing this bill?
It’s nearly universally disliked among those who take the time to learn about it. The GOP has taken to denigrating the Congressional Budget Office for its cost and effect report delivered yesterday, it was so damning. The CBO is a nonpartisan, fair broker of information, one the GOP has itself relied on for decades.
This bill fulfills no campaign promise. It fails to “cover everyone,” it fails to fully replace the ACA, and it fails to offer incentive for insurers or participants to remain in the market or pay for a policy.
The only winners in this bill are those making more than $250,000 a year, who will receive a nice tax cut. But they make up a small portion of the electorate. Meanwhile, the larger portion of GOP voters, many on the lower end of the income spectrum and without other means to health insurance stand to lose what they have under the ACA.
Donald Trump and the GOP health insurance bill may be the hill the Republican party chooses to die on. And that’s just dumb.
#ACA #AHCA #GOP #fraud #dumb #repeal #replace
A Random Stroll 