Slate - "Incapable of Compassion" (the senate bill)

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/06/26/republicans_are_incapable_of_crafting_a_humane_health_care_bill.html

The Latest CBO Report Shows Republicans Are Incapable of Crafting a Humane Health Care Bill

By Jordan Weissmann

The Congressional Budget Office confirmed on Monday that Republicans are incapable of writing a humane health care bill. The Senate's Better Care Reconciliation Act, which it revealed to the public last Friday and may vote on this week, would leave 22 million additional Americans uninsured within a decade, according to the CBO, largely by cutting both Medicaid and subsidies for private insurance in order to fund extravagent tax cuts for the wealthy. ($536 billion of them, in fact.)

Technically, that number is a slight improvement over the GOP's previous efforts. The CBO forecast that the American Health Care Act, which the House passed last month after crafting it in a shambolic rush, would eventually leave 23 million uninsured in order to provide tax relief to investors and medical device makers.
That is pretty much all anybody needs to know about the Republican Party's push to repeal Obamacare—every piece of legislation the party produces amounts to a wealth transfer from the vulnerable to the rich that lowers premiums, though just slightly, for some younger and healthier Americans.


But it's worth lingering on one specific portion of the Senate bill: the cruel bait-and-switch it pulls on America's poor.

Reading extremely charitably, one could make the case that the Senate bill is designed to move low-income Americans off of government insurance and into highly subsidized private coverage. It unwinds Obamcare's expansion of Medicaid, which allowed adults to qualify for the program if they earned up to 138 percent of the poverty line. But it also imitates Obamacare by providing tax credits to help low- and middle-income households buy private insurance, capping their premiums as a percentage of their earnings. A woman in poverty would have to pay no more than 2 percent of her paycheck toward her health insurance, for instance. A woman making 133 percent of the poverty line would pay 2.5 percent. It's a worse deal than Medicaid, which is generally free, but it's something.

snip = more to read at the above link

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Beartracks]

2. "...same heartless theme we've been listening to for months."

Months? Try years.

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