Posted on 03/14/2017 12:41:15 PM PDT by Theoria
There are a lot of unpleasant numbers for Republicans in the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of their health care bill. But congressional leadership found one to cheer: The report says that the bill will eventually cut the average insurance premiums for people who buy their own insurance by 10 percent.
House Speaker Paul Ryan pressed that point in a series of appearances Monday night, suggesting that the budget office had found that the House bill would increase choice and competition and lead to lower prices. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, issued a statement saying, “The Congressional Budget Office agrees that the American Health Care Act will ultimately lower premiums and increase access to care.”
But the way the bill achieves those lower average premiums has little to do with increased choice and competition. It depends, rather, on penalizing older patients and rewarding younger ones. According to the C.B.O. report, the bill would make health insurance so unaffordable for many older Americans that they would simply leave the market and join the ranks of the uninsured.
The remaining pool of people would be comparatively younger and healthier and, thus, less expensive to cover. Other changes would help make health insurance skimpier — cheaper, but with deductibles that are higher than those criticized by Republicans under Obamacare.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They are talking about people over 50 but younger than 65. If those numbers are correct it’s absurd to think someone making 26K is going to be able to spend over half of that (before taxes) on medical insurance. Just don’t get sick until you turn 65 I guess.
I’m losing confidence in Trump AND Pence over this very quickly. I heard Pence this afternoon on both Hannity and Levin. I admit to only catching part of it as I was in and out of the tractor but from what I heard even Pence can’t believe what he is saying.
From what I can see this is turning in to a nine line free fall cluster flop.
Yes, they are making this way to complex and they are doing it on purpose.
The thorniest issue is how to manage pre-existing conditions and still allow people free choice to not participate in the insurnace pool.
2100 already! I just got in and had dinner! I’m not liking this time change business any more than I ever did. We can’t even do something logical like stopping this nonsense so how can we ever expect something that is difficult to ever be done correctly? This country is as disfunctional as ever.
LOL - they gonna recycle the old cartoons from the Bush era - showing the mean spirited Repubs pushing granny over the cliff in her wheelchair?
older people often have assets. The healthcare/government/insurance complex is going to liquefy those assets and feed their maw.
It also helps keep the next generation poorer.
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