Be skeptical of numbers associated with health-care coverage

A proposed tax break on health insurance executive salaries included in the Republican health care bill would save top insurers tens of millions of dollars annually, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Northwestern Community Services, which employs about 200 people and has an annual budget of about $15 million, is at capacity and needs to expand, Elwell said. That wasn’t popular, and it’s the number one item Republicans say they want to repeal. When the 37-year-old lawyer from Bloomington, Indiana, had her first child in 2011, she had health insurance through her job at a nonprofit legal clinic. We said it in a State Budget Trends report and pretty much every Task Force of the last decade.

“So under the new proposal – and there’s a lot of discussion about this – but the bill as it now stands, this starts to get rolled back in 2020, and essentially only folks who are continuously covered would still get the current federal funding level”.

Medicaid provides a safety net for working families that have children with complex medical conditions.

Senate Finance and Claims Chairman Llew Jones, R-Conrad, said the federal legislation is not in its final form, and any estimates about its cost to the state are premature. Under the current GOP bill, he said, “Republicans would be rewarding the states that spent the most money on Medicaid”. A capped program would likely limit or eliminate this service array.

The federal legislation would allow the state to continue to receive the same 90 percent federal match for people who enrolled in the expansion program before 2020.

“Anytime you allow people to pick and choose, you’re making the care they don’t pick more expensive”, said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. “So this program is critical to support our health care system, for kids, all the way through seniors in nursing homes”. “So it’s uncertain whether the (Medicaid) program would be able to respond to, for example, an economic downturn”.

“We just don’t want to be punished” as a state under the proposed Medicaid changes, Deal told GHN.

Their plan, which eliminates employer required insurance and subsidies, reduces tax credits, repeals Medicare expansion and taxes that fund the ACA, imposes a 30 percent penalty to restore lapsed coverage, etc., is created to pad the bottom line of insurers at our expense.

The GOP plan would get rid of federal subsidies that help low- and middle-income Montanans buy individual policies and replace them with federal income-tax credits, tied to one’s age. That could lead to an insurance “death spiral” – a loaded term both sides of the aisle have thrown at each other’s health reform plans frequently over the years but one that has truly bad consequences.

“Anytime you see the deficit going down is a good thing for everybody”, he said.

“Chris, we don’t think so”, Cohn replied. The point, though, is that would be the only restriction on the tax credit. Medicaid expansion in West Virginia “freed up” the revenue Shenandoah Valley Medical System used to start its new prenatal and behavioral health services in Winchester.

However, for the 36,000 Montanans who bought these policies and didn’t get any subsidies – about 3.5 percent of the state’s population – prices have gone up dramatically in the past three years.

Under the current setup, a 21-year-old in Hartford County would pay $199 a month for a high-deductible bronze policy.

Keeping the age rating stable, according to the CBO, would protect people over 60 from an increase of about $4,000 a year in costs. “The legislation will make health insurance less attainable and affordable for most entrepreneurs”. Those who have to let their insurance lapse for more than 63 days will be charged a 30 percent penalty when they re-apply. So Medicaid comes in and picks up some of that cost sharing.