Earlier this week we released a blog post and a long paper called, “It Can’t Be Fixed” that explained why the basic structure of all of the Republican “repeal and replace” necessarily leads to a health care system in which large numbers of Americans and Pennsylvanians lose insurance.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) evaluation of the last version of the Senates’ Better Care Reconciliation Act (without the Cruz Amendment) released on Thursday confirms our argument once again. The CBO predicts that 22 million people will lose health insurance in the first decade. Our quick analysis of the impact on Pennsylvania shows that over one million will lose insurance in our commonwealth.
The basic problem remains that the Republicans are determined to radically reduce federal spending on health care by $1.2 trillion over ten years (and more in the second ten years.). Any bill that aims to reduce spending at this level will not only roll back subsidies in the Exchanges and end the Medicaid Expansion, but make deep cuts to the traditional Medicaid program.
Fixes to the this basic plan, even if they add $200 billion here or $150 billion there, are simply Band-aids on the problem created by the basic structure of the bill. A huge reduction in federal spending on health care leads to tens of millions of fewer people having health insurance. There is simply no way around the basic math.
Note, finally, that the CBO excludes the Cruz Amendment, which every responsible analyst, from left and right, from the consumer and insurance worlds, agree will have a traumatic effect on the individual insurance market and make insurance far more expensive for those who are older or have pre-existing conditions.
This zombie health care bill needs to die, like the others before it.