House Panel Clears Healthcare Bill in Predawn Vote

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on Thursday warned House Republicans that their bill to replace ObamaCare won’t pass in the Republican-controlled Senate in its current state.

Congress is hoping to pass the bill, which would roll back much of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, within a few weeks.

Cuomo also called the Republican plan “a direct assault on NY values” due to the removal of a sliding scale for financial assistance based on income, and because it defunds Planned Parenthood for one year, restricting access to abortion and reproductive health services.

The ACA expanded Medicaid, the social health care program for those with limited economic resources, in order to make sure a health issue wouldn’t disrupt their lives.

“The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we’re just going to make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal government level”. National uninsured rate is below 9 percent, a historic low. In a statement Doggett said that the bill needs “extreme vetting”.

“They (Republicans) do not know what they’re talking about (without seeing the CBO estimates)”, she said. Most new beneficiaries are low-income adults with no children living at home.

“Before people even reach retirement age, big insurance companies could be allowed to charge them an age tax that adds up to thousands of dollars more per year”. Currently, states are reimbursed for their actual costs.

The bill would also cap the expansion of Medicaid in 2020 and change the way the program is funded.

But more significantly, the bill would overhaul the framework of Medicaid, ending its open-ended federal financing.

The GOP bill would change the way subsidies are offered for people who buy their own health care. Because insurance costs, healthcare costs and incomes vary so dramatically around the country, the new tax credit would affect some people more than others. And most of all, the people who would no longer have affordable health care.

Premiums and deductibles are expected to increase.

The income-based tax credit system will be changed to an age and income-based plan, meaning older citizens will be potentially left unprotected. Moreover, he said, the end goal is health, not insurance. More middle-class consumers will benefit, but there’s concern lower-income people would be disadvantaged. Sets up a fund that states can use for a variety of purposes, including cost-sharing assistance. Its president, Pamela Cipriano, also sent a letter to Congress to Wednesday, warning that the bill “threatens health care affordability, access and delivery for individuals across the nation”.

The replacement of the individual mandate with a 30 percent surcharge on premiums for a year for those who go without insurance for two months may scare off people who need insurance. “But, at the same time, we had a very a strong vote both out of the Ways and Means Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has all of the different factions of our conference”, he said. Standard & Poor’s estimated that the draft plan would reduce individual enrollment, now at around 10 million, by 2 to 4 million people. Advocates for older people complain that’s unfair.