With all eyes on Trump, GOP Congress is still working to strip health care from millions

[workinclasszero]

With all eyes on Trump, GOP Congress is still working to strip health care from millions
New analysis suggests that 6 million people could lose insurance due to pre-existing conditions under GOP's bill
Amanda Marcotte Sunday, May 21, 2017 7:00 AM EDT

One of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) is the ban on insurance discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. It’s no wonder, then, that Republican politicians want voters to believe that their replacement bill, the American Health Care Act, does not return us to the pre-ACA world, where people with pre-existing conditions often found themselves unable to get anything close to adequate, affordable health insurance.

A new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, however, shows that millions of Americans could return to those days when having a pre-existing condition meant not having decent insurance, or indeed, any insurance at all.

Republicans clearly want the public to believe otherwise.

In other words, 6 million people might find that their insurance premiums have tripled, quadrupled or more, and that the only other alternative is some minimally funded “high-risk pool” that doesn’t really offer substantial coverage. It’s a little like saying everyone is allowed “access” to a car, but then making it so that the only car some people can afford comes without tires or a transmission.

Understandably, the rapidly unfolding Russia scandal and the apparent coverup by the Trump administration is absorbing most of the news cycle. But while the specter of presidential corruption is a sexy story, the bigger danger right now comes from Republican policy — little of which is driven by Trump or his administration. Republicans would be just as eager to repeal Obamacare and kick millions of people off the insurance rolls under a President Marco Rubio or a President Jeb Bush.

The fact of the matter is that Republican senators are still plugging away on a bill to strip health care coverage from millions, a process that doesn’t seem to have slowed at all just because Trump is immersed in a tumultuous scandal. The Senate has created a group of 13 leading Republicans who continue to meet three times a week to hammer out the upper chamber’s version of the AHCA. Some of the ideas being floated would, if this can be believed, make the insurance system even worse for consumers.

That’s why the Kaiser study and similar nonpartisan analyses are so important. Trump’s scandals barely matter to congressional Republicans. If anything, they create a media distraction from what they’re doing, which is crafting a truly nefarious work of health care “reform” without grabbing headlines for it. Even if Donald Trump is run out of Washington in disgrace — here’s hoping! — the grim reality is that the larger GOP is still set to do serious damage to the health and well-being of millions of Americans.

[flamingdem]

1. He's driving the insurance companies crazy

by threatening to cut subsidies. The result is that they're padding the premiums and that alone will screw Obamacare.

[workinclasszero]

2. It's all planned by Trump and the republican party

ACA will collapse because of their evil deeds and they will ram through Trumpcare and blame the disastrous results on democrats of course.

The terminally stupid deplorables will eat it up with a spoon, no doubt.