The GOP health care bill is the definition of big government waste

Colin Baillio
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read

After years of slamming “Big Government” as being wasteful and inefficient, you’d think the GOP would be dead set on fixing this percieved problem, now that the party controls all of the levers of power in Washington DC. But the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare is an example of wasteful spending at its worst.

A recent analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the Republican health care bill would kick millions of low-income people off of Medicaid* and push them into private health insurance plans with $13,000 deductibles. That’s $13,000 per person without even counting premiums. Asking people with low and moderate incomes to shoulder the burden of extreme medical costs is not only cruel, it’s infeasible. If you are making $16,000 a year or less, there is no way you can afford to pay a $13,000 deductible. Hell, a person making $50,000 would struggle to pay that! And sure enough, 47% of Americans say they don’t have enough cash to pay a $400 dollar medical bill.

Loren Adler and Paul B. Ginsburg at Brookings

The GOP plan offers income-based premium tax credits to help people afford monthly premiums to pay for these health insurance plans. In theory, it is a good idea to help lower-income people pay for health care, which is extremely expensive and vitally important. Indeed, the Affordable Care Act did just that (albeit with more robust financial assistance). But the GOP is proposing that the government dole out billions of dollars in subsidy money to pay for junk insurance plans that offer virtually no financial protection. These subsidies aren’t chump change. In one Arizona county, the Senate bill would cost the government over $20,000 a year to subsidize the premium of a low-income 60 year old, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s calculations.

I struggle to envision a more wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. The premium tax credits would go directly into the pockets of insurance companies that wouldn’t have to cover a dollar of medical expenses until the $13,000 deductible was met. Funneling money into insurance that does not protect against financial ruin is bad for patients and an inefficient use of public resources. The CBO projects that millions would be forced to go uninsured because their only option would be expensive yet useless insurance.

This bill is flawed by design. It’s time to end the reckless attempts to shift costs to poor & sick people and begin working on a bipartisan approach to improve health care for the American people.

*Medicaid is comprehensive coverage for low-income people that has served Americans well for over 50 years. Millions of kids, people with disabilities, seniors, and working families will lose Medicaid coverage under the GOP bill, which cut the program by 35%. These draconian cuts will force people into the barebones plans described above or cause them to go uninsured.

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