House Republican leaders recently presented an outline of their strategies to replace the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare to their rank-and-file members. The newly presented plans rely heavily on tax credits for financing the insurance purchases and on significantly reducing the federal payments to 31 states, which expanded the Medicaid eligibility.
Paul D. Ryan, the Speaker and 2 House committee Chairman, stood along with HHS’s new secretary, Tom Price to prepare the Republican lawmakers for a week-long Presidents’ Day recess, which included anxious and angry questions regarding the fate of the health law. However, the talking points offered by these individuals did include any information on how the legislation would be paid for, although they pointed out the benefits that comes without any controversial costs.
Reports also indicate that they didn’t share any information on the number of citizens who would lose or gain insurance under the plan. In addition to that, these plans were also not compared with the Affordable Care Act that extended the coverage to over 20 million citizens. However, many experts assume that the number of citizens covered under this new plan will be a lot less.
In a recent document, the House Republican leaders stated that they will not “pull the rug out from anyone who received care under states’ Medicaid expansions.” On the other hand, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, Kenneth E. Raske expressed his concerns regarding the latest proposal stating that the proposals will “put a huge amount of pressure on state budgets and put many Americans at risk of losing health care coverage.”
Reports indicate that the latest proposal would fundamentally revoke the Medicaid program, which is a Great Society initiative. The Medicaid program has offered health care to over 7 million American citizens, and it included both middle-class and poor people, who do not have enough money for proper health care.
According to the new proposal, the open-ended entitlement program, which was designed to cover the entire health care needs of the patients, will be put on a budget. In addition to that, the subsidies of the Affordable Care Act that offers more help to the poor people will also be replaced by fixed tax credits for supporting the people to purchase insurance policies.