The US House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly approved a Bill to repeal Obamacare, handing Republican President Donald Trump a victory that could prove short-lived as the healthcare legislation heads into a likely tough battle in the Senate.
Advertisement
The bill would end Obamacare’s individual mandate, already too weak as a policy mechanism, and impose a fee on those who go without coverage and want to re-enter the insurance market – creating an incentive for relatively healthy people to remain uncovered. Such a scenario would force the House and Senate to work together to forge a compromise bill.
“So much discretion is given to the states without any guardrails”, she said, adding that her proposal for a health care overhaul would “keep the ACA safeguards, the consumer protections, for people with pre-existing conditions”.
So who’s telling the truth?
After that original score, House Republicans changed the bill in an effort to win enough votes from both their most conservative and their moderate members in order to pass the bill without any support from House Democrats.
“Progressives are going to hang this around the necks of every one of those Republicans”, said Angel Padilla, co-founder of the liberal group Indivisible.
While the House bill that passed by a razor-thin margin on May 4 requires states to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, that coverage might not be affordable, Collins said.
Collins said Sunday it is “unlikely” that the House plan would cover pre-existing conditions as well or better than Obamacare does, as Ryan and the administration promise.
He’s referencing late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who revealed his infant son was born with a congenital heart problem, a condition that doesn’t discriminate between the rich and poor. Even if we can give them something that doesn’t give them access to care.
” ‘Hey, we got this deal done”.
Pete Couladis, the Athens County Republican Chair, said he is glad the bill is gaining traction six weeks after an earlier version of the bill backed by Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan failed.
“Before members even had time to read the 1,000-page bill, it already has cleared two major House committees”, Ryan wrote in a 2009 op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“This Republican health care bill needs to either be flushed down the toilet or thrown in the garbage”.
In contrast, Mr Trump’s plan will once again allow insurance providers to charge higher premiums to Americans with pre-existing health conditions – something that was outlawed under Obamacare. But the reason they will cost less is because they will be less comprehensive. All told, the bill is expected to cut Medicaid by $880 billion over 10 years.
“It will kick 24 million Americans off their insurance coverage”, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) said. That could easily be a $100,000 hospital bill. But if all that money – and the other $23 billion -went exclusively for people with pre-existing conditions, it would cover just 600,000 people, Avalere found.
Advertisement
Almost every major medical group, including the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association, and the AARP advocacy group for older Americans, strongly opposed the Bill.
