Plan to repeal Obamacare cripples state budgets, economies
Anyone surprised? Business as usual with the GOP. The states had to pick up the slack from their tax cuts.
If Republicans finally make good on their vow to repeal the Affordable Care Act -- but without adopting a suitable replacement -- 24 million Americans would be removed from the health care insurance rolls in 2021. And federal spending on health care would decline by $927 billion over the next decade, according to a provocative new study by the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has vowed to repeal Obamacare as one of his first acts, although neither Trump nor Republican congressional leaders are anywhere close to a consensus on replacement legislation that wouldn’t leave millions of Americans in the lurch. House Republicans are planning to release the outline of a plan later this month.
Projecting the impact of the repeal of Obamacare is not idle speculation. Last January, the GOP controlled House and Senate finally approved a measure to end the ACA, but without including an alternative approach. President Obama vetoed the legislation. But if Trump is sitting in the White House next January and the Republicans manage to retain control of the House and Senate, then Obamacare could go by the boards.
If that were to happen, 14.5 million fewer low-income people would lose Medicaid coverage while 9.4 million people would lose federal tax credits to purchase private health insurance on Obamacare exchanges, according to the new report. More than eight in ten of those losing coverage would be members of working families; 63 percent would have incomes below 200 percent of the poverty level and 40 percent would be young adults.
While on the surface, at least, the federal government would save nearly $1 trillion over the coming decade, state governments, hospitals and other medical providers would take a severe economic beating, as sharp reductions in federal spending for expanded Medicaid coverage for the poor would likely be offset by state spending increases of $68.5 billion between 2017 and 2026.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/healthcare/plan-to-repeal-obamacare-cripples-state-budgets-economies/ar-AAh1KyC?li=BBnbfcN