Thursday, June 23, 2016

Latest Pretend Healthcare Plan From GOP

I want to thank Paul Waldman for reading it so I don't have to.

Ryan would eliminate the individual and employer mandates; shut down the insurance exchanges; cancel the ACA's expansion of Medicaid and then cut the program and convert it to block grants so that states could kick people off; move Medicare to a "premium support" model, which essentially means privatizing it and cutting it back; eliminate the ACA's subsidies for low- and middle-income people, which would be replaced by a refundable tax-credit; promote health savings accounts and "mini-med" plans that cover virtually nothing; cap the tax exclusion for employer plans, which he presents as a friendlier alternative to the ACA's "Cadillac tax" but which in effect is pretty much the same thing; and limit the amount victims of medical malpractice can sue for, along with a few other things.

One important note: Despite what Ryan says, the plan doesn't actually maintain the prohibition on denials of coverage for preexisting conditions, which may be the single most popular element of the ACA. It does so only if you maintain continuous coverage, beginning with a special one-time open enrollment.

That doesn't sound so good. I'm glad President Trump will give us "something terrific."

Trump himself couldn't care less about the details of health-care policy — he'd probably sign whatever Congress put in front of him.

Oops!

Charles Pierce read it, too.

Abject cowardice in keeping the most popular features of the Affordable Care Act while destroying the funding mechanism for them?

That probably sums it up well. 

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