How the repeal of “Obamacare” could affect Montana – KXLH.com | Helena, Montana

The health care debate has focused primarily on proposed alterations to the insurance system established by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but the Medicaid issue is equally important. Many sincerely believe redistributive policy is morally wrong; that less-regulated markets are the best way to increase access to affordable coverage and won’t foster dependency precisely because it isn’t an entitlement; that insurance should be more minimal than ACA proponents think it should be; and so forth.

“The major downside of Obamacare is it never did address one of the biggest problems that folks face in health care right now, is that it did absolutely nothing to bend the cost curve down for health care costs”, he says.

Gov. Nathan Deal says he doesn’t want Georgia and other states that didn’t expand Medicaid coverage to be “punished” under proposed changes to federal health care law.

Here’s all you need to know about the plan put forward by House Republicans to replace the Affordable Care Act: It will deny millions of Americans the health care coverage they now enjoy for the first time under Obamacare. The program now costs the federal government around $370 billion annually and covers costs no matter the amounts. This two-thirds of the state’s population has been largely unaffected by the ACA – and probably wouldn’t see many effects from a repeal.

“The cuts would be so dramatic they would really taint state budgets”, said Adam Fox of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, a Denver-based nonprofit that supports the current health care law. The legislation will also be amended to include work requirements for Medicaid recipients who are able-bodied and without dependents. This expansion is key element of the ACA, with the federal government covering almost all the costs of the expansion.

Meanwhile, non-expansion states would share a $2 billion annual funding pool over five years under AHCA. Starting this year, states are required to contribute payments that will be ratcheted up through 2020 when states’ contributions will be capped at 10 percent.

The most objective observers acknowledge there were flaws in the roll-out, fewer have signed up than anticipated, in some states the choice of physicians has been narrowed, and-most importantly-an insufficient number of otherwise healthy individuals (mostly younger) have chosen not to sign up which can starve the program of the revenues it requires in order to fully flourish.

Advocates say this plan means millions will lose coverage.

DENVER | Colorado officials are scrambling to figure out what may happen to the $5 billion or so the state gets from the federal government each year to cover Medicaid.

The new American Health Care Act would give people smaller tax credits, and would eliminate the cost-sharing subsidies, which lower out-of-pocket expenses for the lowest-income people who buy health insurance on the marketplaces. During the 2014 elections, multiple GOP senate candidates ran on repeal while dissembling and evading endlessly on whether they’d also support rolling back their state’s Medicaid expansions. That’s less than half of what Bentlage is getting now under the ACA. Most other countries have a national health service that can bargain directly with drug companies to lower monopoly prices. We don’t have high levels of reliability in care. If you’re 60 or older, it would be $4,000. Some of those households paid both, but it’s not known how many, according to the Montana Department of Revenue. He has argued that it was too expensive long term. “Costs are out of control and they’re just going to go up and up and up”. “Premiums would skyrocket, and even more than that, out of pocket costs would soar”.