A couple of press releases about the so-called American Health Care Act

A lot of stuff hits my in-box that I should probably share. This from Avalere is a finding that Trumpcare would cut Medicaid funding for non-disabled children by $43 billion over 10 years. Children are the largest group covered by Medicaid, although disabled people and elderly people in long-term care account for the majority of actual spending. The whole thing is long and wonky but the bottom line is:

Avalere also examined the impact of per capita caps at the state-level, and found that all 50 states and the District of Columbia would lose Medicaid funding for traditional children. The reductions ranged from $59 million in North Dakota to $5.1 billion in Texas.

 Meanwhile, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds that Dumpcare would cause a sharp increase in premiums for lower income older adults, who currently receive much more generous subsidies under the ACA.

"Age-related tax credits, while easy to understand, do not target subsidies most efficiently,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Tax credits that don’t reflect differences in ability to pay and geographical variation in the cost of health care will lead to significant loss of coverage, as suggested by the most recent CBO score of the AHCA.”

The reason the Republicans want to do this is to provide a huge tax cut to wealthy people. That is the only reason. In every other way, it makes things far worse for the American people, and particularly the people who voted for the current Resident. Don't let you representatives in congress lie to you about this.

Oh yeah, and this just in: the "high risk pools" which are supposed to cover people with expensive pre-existing conditions are underfunded by 3-5 times. In other words, the Republican solution is indeed "let people die."

"Traditional high-risk pools are symptoms of poorly regulated and inadequately subsidized insurance markets," said Katherine Hempstead, senior adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "To properly finance them is extremely expensive, which is why they tend to be underfunded, resulting in inadequate access to coverage for those who need health care the most."