And yet, McConnell and other GOP'ers claim to work in the interest of the people .... I wonder what people they are thinking about?
Senate Republicans desperately want you to believe their health care bill is something it’s not.
They want you to believe that it protects the financially and medically vulnerable, that it won’t “pull the rug out” from people now depending on the Affordable Care Act for insurance, that ― as President Donald Trump has promised ― it will have “heart.”
Reality is different.
The Senate bill, which GOP leaders unveiled Thursday, looks an awful lot like the bill that the House passed in May. It would roll back the expansion of Medicaid that has allowed millions of people to get health insurance, then change Medicaid’s structure and reduce its funding going forward. It reduces the financial assistance available to Americans who buy coverage on their own and scales back guarantees of what insurance covers.
It would feel like an improvement to some people, for sure, particularly young, healthy people who would end up paying less for coverage than they do today, as well those who want less-comprehensive coverage or are angry about paying the individual mandate penalty. The wealthy Americans now paying taxes that finance Obamacare’s coverage expansion would get to keep that money. But the net effect would be more exposure to crippling medical bills for many millions of Americans.
It’s possible that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his allies have deluded themselves into thinking this won’t happen. It’s more likely that they grasp the consequences and simply deem them worthwhile, for some combination of personal, political and philosophical reasons.
But they can’t come out and make that argument ― in part because, as polls indicate, the public almost surely disagrees. And so McConnell and his allies have written the Senate bill in a way that’s designed to obscure some of its harshest effects and give skittish members plausible-sounding reasons to vote yes.
Senate Republicans desperately want you to believe their health care bill is something it’s not.
They want you to believe that it protects the financially and medically vulnerable, that it won’t “pull the rug out” from people now depending on the Affordable Care Act for insurance, that ― as President Donald Trump has promised ― it will have “heart.”
Reality is different.
The Senate bill, which GOP leaders unveiled Thursday, looks an awful lot like the bill that the House passed in May. It would roll back the expansion of Medicaid that has allowed millions of people to get health insurance, then change Medicaid’s structure and reduce its funding going forward. It reduces the financial assistance available to Americans who buy coverage on their own and scales back guarantees of what insurance covers.
It would feel like an improvement to some people, for sure, particularly young, healthy people who would end up paying less for coverage than they do today, as well those who want less-comprehensive coverage or are angry about paying the individual mandate penalty. The wealthy Americans now paying taxes that finance Obamacare’s coverage expansion would get to keep that money. But the net effect would be more exposure to crippling medical bills for many millions of Americans.
It’s possible that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his allies have deluded themselves into thinking this won’t happen. It’s more likely that they grasp the consequences and simply deem them worthwhile, for some combination of personal, political and philosophical reasons.
But they can’t come out and make that argument ― in part because, as polls indicate, the public almost surely disagrees. And so McConnell and his allies have written the Senate bill in a way that’s designed to obscure some of its harshest effects and give skittish members plausible-sounding reasons to vote yes.
