Trumpcare vs. Obamacare: Apocalypse Foretold - By Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman MARCH 13, 2017
The Congressional Budget Office report on Trumpcare is out, and its devastating: 14 million people losing insurance in the first year, 24 million over time, with premiums soaring for older, lower-income Americans in many cases, the very people who went strongly for President Trump. The C.B.O. thinks it would reduce the deficit, but only marginally, around $30 billion a year in a $19 trillion economy.
Let me offer one assertion and ask two questions.
The assertion is that something like this was to be expected. The C.B.O. came in even worse on coverage than most predicted, but it was obvious that the news would be terrible because thats what the logic of the situation told us. Obamacare imposes a mandate to induce healthy people to sign up, offers means-tested subsidies to make insurance affordable and expands Medicaid to take care of people with really low incomes. Trumpcare eliminates the mandate, slashes subsidies overall and redirects them to those who dont need them and sharply cuts Medicaid. Of course that leads to a huge drop in coverage.
Or to put it differently, Obamacare is actually an intelligently designed system, and Republican claims that they could do much better even while slashing funding so they could cut taxes on the rich were always obvious nonsense. Trumpcare is a slapdash, incompetent piece of legislation; but even a much more competent set of people couldnt have done better given the constraints of Republican Party ideology.
Now my questions: First, can this legislation still go through? I have learned never to underestimate the cravenness of Republican moderates, who may posture to the center but almost always cave to the hard right when it matters. But even so, its hard to imagine this act of cruelty getting 50 senators. And if it cant pass the Senate, wont right-wing purists in the House decide to advertise their purity by voting against a bill that still falls short of free-market ideals rather than vote for Obamacare 0.5?
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/opinion/trumpcare-vs-obamacare-apocalypse-foretold.html?emc=edit_th_20170314&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284