The big lie of Zombie Trumpcare is that it protects people with pre-existing conditions, and that the latest amendment from Rep. Fred Upton protects them even more. It doesn’t, not nearly adequately. So the even bigger lie is that Republicans give a shit about sick people. News flash: they don’t. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be destroying Medicaid in this bill. It’s been providing health care to people with pre-existing conditions for as long as it’s been around. Trumpcare would end that.
The underlying bill would radically restructure Medicaid by capping the federal government’s contribution to each state’s Medicaid program each year beginning in 2020. To avoid exceeding the cap, and thereby paying the entire amount of any excess costs with their own funds, states would have to decide whether or not to “follow the money” by targeting high-cost enrollees. These would include enrollees with pre-existing conditions that are expensive to treat, as well as the high-cost providers and high-cost medications that treat those conditions.
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If a state wants to cut Medicaid spending on children (who don’t vote) in order to stay under a federal cap, will it target the smaller but far more expensive subset of children with disabilities, or will it target the less expensive but larger subset of children without disabilities, or both? […]There would be some logic in policymakers focusing on this high cost population, which accounts for about 25 percent of all the Medicaid spending on children but represent only about 4 percent of all the children enrolled in the program.
Once again, this is not about taking care of people. It’s not about health policy. It’s not about the children. It’s about tax cuts for the very rich—tax cuts explicitly made possible by gutting Medicaid and taking care away from the most vulnerable children.
House Republicans are hellbent on ripping away our health insurance. Call your member of Congress at 202-224-3121, and demand they vote NO on a renewed Trumpcare that is worse than the one before. Remind them they work for you.