The Bankruptcies That Would Follow an Obamacare Repeal

[babylonsister]

The Bankruptcies That Would Follow an Obamacare Repeal

Without insurance, millions of Americans will find themselves in dire financial straits as they struggle to pay for medical services.
Annie Lowrey 10:02 AM ET Business



Senate Republicans are working to pass legislation scaling back government support for health coverage, with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calling for a vote on Tuesday to begin debate on a bill whose precise contents remain unknown. “Every Republican running for office promised immediate relief from this disastrous law,” President Trump said on Monday, referring to Obamacare. “But so far, Senate Republicans have not done their job in ending the Obamacare nightmare.”

Even without more specifics on the details of the legislation, one thing is clear: The options under consideration would increase the number of uninsured by 15 to 30 million over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated. A consequence of this will be not only a loss of access to medical services, but an increase in financial crises for millions of American families. Insurance, after all, is also a financial product, protecting people from economic ruin.

Take, for example, the story of Kathy Mosby. In early 2014, Mosby went through the most painful, calamitous period in her life. In January, her mother died of an aneurism. In February, a neighbor’s tree crushed part of her house. “I wasn’t feeling right, and I started having excruciating pain when I ate,” she told me. She figured it was a stress-induced ulcer. But a doctor performed a CAT scan and found tumors pressing on her bowel. In March, she was diagnosed with lymphoma, later determined to be Burkitt lymphoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that is quickly fatal if left untreated.

The Affordable Care Act saved her not just from cancer, but from financial ruin, Mosby told me. Her employer, a small Lake Tahoe resort, did not offer insurance. “I’d tried to get it personally and was knocked down,” she told me. “You had migraines? Preexisting condition. You’ve ever had a toothache? Preexisting condition. So I signed up for Covered California,” the state’s Obamacare marketplace. Her insurance had kicked in when the Affordable Care Act came into full effect on January 1, 2014. The treatment she needed shortly thereafter—including surgery and intensive chemotherapy—ended up costing more than a million dollars, paid for almost entirely by her plan. “It was the most astonishing blessing,” she told me.

Much of the debate around the GOP’s proposals has centered on how the bill will determine whether Americans have access to health care. But economists and policy analysts fear that any of the options under consideration by Republicans in the House and the Senate would not just strip away coverage and care from millions of America’s most economically vulnerable families. It would financially imperil them too. “There’s been an appropriate focus on how many more people will be uninsured,” said Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit that performs health-policy research. “In some ways, lost in the shuffle has been the dramatic changes these replacement bills would make in how much financial exposure low-income people would have.”

One way or another, economists and health-policy experts say that the Republican plans would place millions of lower-income Americans into dire financial circumstances. In a recent analysis, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the subsidized plans that former Medicaid enrollees would be able to buy would carry $6,000 deductibles—making the coverage unaffordable for a person earning, say, $18,000 a year. “As a result, despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few low-income people would purchase any plan,” the CBO concluded.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/health-care-financial-protection/534762/

[NickB79]

1. Between this, and the massive economic blow to the health care industry, a long recession is due

Millions of people forced into crushing poverty by health care bills, millions losing their jobs as clinics and hospitals close, and slashes to food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid leave little reason to be optimistic about the future of this nation's economy.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. What most likely will happen is,

Tens of thousand's of people being unemployed,Care Centers filing for Bankruptcy,and the Recession will hit like a ton of bricks. Remember,this is one sixth of the Economy,and with the typical turn of pay checks on Main Street,instead of 16%,the multiplier effect will look like triple or more effect.

Winners are the 400 wealthiest families,and as usual,the losers are the 99.9% of the Nation.