Republican lawmakers – health plan tax credit changes likely to help seniors

IL could face almost $40 billion in lost federal Medicaid support over 10 years under a health care overhaul proposed last week by congressional Republicans, a health industry spokesman told lawmakers Thursday. And does substituting an option surcharge for a mandated fine mean Republicans are getting government out of health care? “There could be a push to do that because the income range on the subsidies is much wider”.

But Americans also saw limitations to the bill.

First things first: The Republican health care bill would greatly ramp up the number of people who are uninsured. As a result, the CBO estimates that premiums for many older Americans will rise by up to 25 percent.

Based on the CBO report, about 24 million will lose health insurance over the next few years, if this is adopted. In addition, rising premiums would deter some from buying insurance.

The CBO projected 52 million people would be uninsured by 2026 if the bill became law, compared with 28 million who would not have coverage that year if the law remained unchanged.

The Affordable Care Act is flawed, but the flaws are fixable.

The bill also calls for cap and cut on Medicaid which could force cut tens of billions, ending guarantee or reducing care for 14 million Californians now on Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. That price even included a plane ticket to fly the patient out for the procedure and put him up in a nice hotel room, where he was visited by his doctors throughout the recovery process instead of a hospital room.

But it wouldn’t work out the same for everyone. Even upper middle-class people will struggle to benefit from HSAs. If Obamacare went unchanged, a decade from now a 64-year-old earning $26,500 would pay $1,700 per year in premiums after benefiting from federal assistance. Under the proposed changes, that person would pay $14,600, more than eight times more.

The ability to contribute to a health savings account is not new. The Republican plan would up that from 3-to-1 to 5-to-1. In fact, a study published by the Urban Institute last fall reported that the rate of uninsured veterans dropped by 42% between 2013 and 2015. It’s also to his credit that he understands his base, which includes many low-income and elderly Americans. Joe Vitale, a Democrat who chairs a legislative health committee, said the costs of the proposed federal cuts to Medicaid could be dramatic for his state. He is elated that the deficit will be reduced by $337 billion, but fails to notice that revenue will be reduced by $592 billion through the tax cuts to the wealthy and health insurers.

The AHCA also curtails the Medicaid program, a change that would be particularly devastating in Broome County and other communities that are fighting an opioid epidemic with strained budgets. Existing enrollees could stay on, but the expanded income threshold that the Affordable Care Act set would move.

The added $54 billion will come out of the rest of the budget – gone will be any arts and public television funding, Community Development Block Grants to provide low-income housing, funds for long-distance Amtrak service, about a third of the funding for the Environmental Protection Agency including any funding for climate change research, more than 25 percent of the State Department funding and another big chunk from agriculture.

The effects would be minimal over the next 12 to 18 months.