AHCA
lborkowski | June 30, 2017Kim Krisberg has already ably described how the Senate’s “Better Care Reconciliation Act” would gut Medicaid while giving massive tax breaks to the wealthiest, so I want to emphasize a few key points that are worth bearing in mind.
The Congressional Budget Office score of the Senate bill finds that over the next 10 years, 22 million people would lose coverage (relative to keeping the current law), and 15 million of those people would be losing Medicaid. The worst of the Medicaid cuts would come after 2026, though, as the per-capita cap on the federal share of spending rises much more slowly…
lborkowski | May 29, 2017In early May, House Republicans rushed to pass an amended version of the American Health Care Act (HR 1628) without waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to give them an estimate of how it would affect health insurance coverage nationwide. Now, CBO has released a score that shows just how destructive this legislation will be if it becomes law: It will increase the number of uninsured by 23 million over the next decade by slashing Medicaid, allowing the destabilization of the individual markets in areas where one-sixth of the US population resides, and putting individual policies out of…
lborkowski | May 8, 2017Last week, 217 Republican members of the House of Representatives passed a bill that, if it becomes law, will leave millions of people without health insurance. We don’t have a good grasp of how many millions will be harmed, because they were in too much of a hurry to wait for an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — or, in some cases, to read the bill they were voting on. My guess is that most of those members know it’s a terrible bill that will harm many of their constituents, and they’re hoping the Senate will fix the mess they’ve made.
Like the original American…
lborkowski | May 1, 2017Back in March, House Republicans pulled the unpopular and highly problematic American Health Care Act from consideration, and House Minority Leader Paul Ryan declared “Obamacare is the law of the land.” Now, however House Republicans are trying again to undo the Affordable Care Act. Last week, Representative Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) introduced an amendment designed to win over the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, who opposed the original AHCA because it didn’t do enough to roll back existing law.
As the New York Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz summarizes, the amendment would allow states to receive…
lborkowski | April 3, 2017In the 18 days between House Republicans’ introduction of the American Health Care Act and its withdrawal, women’s health was in the spotlight. With House Speaker Paul Ryan now stating that he’s going to try again on legislation to “replace” the Affordable Care Act, it’s worth looking at some of the ways the ACA has benefited women – and how actions from Congress and the Trump administration could affect women’s insurance coverage and access to care.
Women gained coverage under the ACA
The ACA’s biggest achievement was reducing the percentage of the population without health insurance. It did…
lborkowski | March 20, 2017A few of the recent pieces I recommend reading:
Sarah Kliff & Ezra Klein at Vox: The Lessons of Obamacare
Chris Ladd in Forbes: Unspeakable Realities Block Universal Health Coverage in the US
Donelle Eller in the Des Moines Register: Iowa pollution enforcement could lose big under Trump EPA cuts, critics warn
Teddy Wilson at Rewire: Texas Legislators "Ignore" Spiking Black Maternal Mortality Rates
Linda-Gail Bekker & Anthony S. Fauci at STAT: Women are Leading the Way in HIV Research
And because the House Republicans' healthcare bill is so consequential for public health and there's…
lborkowski | March 13, 2017House Republicans have released –and rushed through two committees—the American Health Care Act, which would result in destabilized individual insurance markets and millions of people losing health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office hasn’t yet released its estimate of the likely impacts, but an analysis from authors at the Brookings/USC Schaeffer Initiative calculates it would result in 15 million people losing coverage. The AHCA contains provisions addressing both private and public insurance; I’m most concerned about the impacts on Medicaid, which would shift substantial healthcare…