AHCA would hit Iowa hard

[Skidmore]

Don't lecture ore snipe. We need to get info like this out there. pass it on.

http://www.iowafiscal.org/ahca-would-hit-iowa-hard/

AHCA would hit Iowa hard

By Iowa Fiscal Partnership
6/22/17
Coverage losses in House AHCA sets low bar for Senate, White House;

AHCA would impose dramatically higher costs for Iowa and Iowa residents


By Peter Fisher

The American Health Care Act (AHCA) passed by the House of Representatives would cut health insurance for nearly 200,000 Iowans in order to provide billions in tax cuts to wealthy individuals, drug companies, and insurance companies. Moreover, instead of fixing the problems with Iowa’s health insurance exchange, it would make those problems worse. As the Senate uses this legislation as the basis for its own proposal, supporters’ promises of more state flexibility and individual choice ring hollow. So-called “flexibility” means an enormous cost shift requiring the state to spend millions more and cut services. Meanwhile, “choice” for thousands of Iowans would be stark: go without health insurance that had become unaffordable, or go without basic necessities such as food.

The AHCA would fundamentally change Medicaid in two ways. First, it eventually would end the Affordable Care Act — or Obamacare — expansion of Medicaid, through which 150,000 low-income Iowans have gained coverage. Second, the AHCA would cut federal funding for the overall Medicaid program, which would force Iowa to find an estimated $336 million more in the state budget for 2023 in order to maintain current eligibility. Given Iowa’s chronic budget shortfalls, this is very unlikely to happen. As a result, the state would likely be forced to restrict Medicaid eligibility and cut benefits to children, the elderly and the disabled.

Altogether, some 191,100 Iowans — 38.1 percent of the nonelderly adult enrollees now served — could lose Medicaid under the House plan, according to new analysis by the Urban Institute.[1] This would make Iowa one of the biggest losers nationally, as only 11 states have greater shares of their Medicaid enrollees in jeopardy of losing coverage. Nationally, the loss is set at 1 in 4 enrollees.

The AHCA hits rural and elderly Iowans the hardest, both from the cuts in insurance subsidies and the cuts in Medicaid. In Iowa’s 78 counties outside metropolitan areas, a family of four with $40,000 income would face an average net increase in premiums (after subsidies) of $7,607 per year; their cost would about double. For an elderly couple with the same income, the increase would average $14,582. The likely loss of the Medicaid expansion would disproportionately harm rural Iowans, who are more likely to have health issues and difficulty paying for health care....more

[Skittles]

1. hits rural folk the hardest

is this what it will take to wake them the fuck up?

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a55824/senate-republican-healthcare-bill/

[rurallib]

2. When Peter Fisher says something is true, it is true

So I would take his figures as gospel.