Virginia could lose big on Medicaid funding under Obamacare replacement

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is leading the push for the bill, saying it is the best hope that Republicans have of ending Obamacare and passing a replacement bill under a fast-track budget procedure that can not be blocked by Senate Democrats. But the Harrisonville Republican hasn’t trashed it either.

The yardstick for judging the Republican plan is how their system would compare to the one that Democrats enacted through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

The report he said, confirms what he and Price have been saying for a long time: putting market competition into health care and taking government out “will do what it does with everything else”. Republicans simply do not believe it is the government’s job to tell you you have to have insurance.

The Republican plan provides refundable tax credits, but in many cases the amount of assistance is sharply reduced. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of attempting to push through the biggest transfer of wealth in the nation’s history. Because of that – and because some healthy people will just opt out of insurance altogether – about 14 million Americans would lose coverage under the AHCA in 2018 alone; that number would climb to 24 million by 2026. “Obamacare is collapsing under its own weight”.

It can come as no surprise that legislation as complex as the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act can’t be overhauled overnight, as Republicans in Congress are trying to do.

On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office released its long-awaited analysis of the bill.

As an example of the CBO’s inability to forecast the insurance market, Mulvaney noted that it had missed badly on Obamacare enrollment predictions for this year, suggesting in a report released three years ago that 24 million people would use the law’s exchanges to purchase healthcare. John Cornyn, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican said Monday. But Republican efforts in recent days to discredit the CBO have made it clear that they know their plan isn’t a fix.

Their plan would lead to more uninsured Americans, higher health care premiums, more unplanned pregnancies, health providers not compensated for treating the uninsured and Americans dying for lack of care.

All eyes turn to the Congressional Budget Office to project the impact of the GOP’s American Health Care Act on taxpayers and consumers – including how many people will lose health coverage across the country. Next year’s loss is “huge”, she said.

“I’ll call it “Trumpcare” if you want to, but I didn’t hear President Trump say to any of us: ‘I want my name on that, ‘” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said last week, according to The Hill. And the reduction in the uninsured is more like 14 million, not 30 million, and all of that reduction is the result of the Medicaid expansion, not the law’s private sector regulations and mandates. But Missouri Republicans blocked that initiative.

The Republican plan rolls this expansion back in 2020, a move that would deny Medicaid coverage to millions of working poor.

However, House Speaker Paul Ryan found the CBO report to be a pleasing affirmation of the bill.

He said the House bill would provide “far” more choices at lower costs.

“This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare”, Ryan said. Many conservatives can not even feign support for it.

INSKEEP: Can Democrats stay unanimous against this as they’ve said they want to be? If the government says thou shall buy our health insurance, the government estimates are going to say people will comply and it will happen.