Senate health care bill

The Republican health care bill finally sees the light of day ...



Shifting Dollars From Poor to Rich Is a Key Part of the Senate Health Bill ...

[...] The bill’s largest benefits go to the wealthiest Americans, who have the most comfortable health care arrangements, and its biggest losses fall to poorer Americans who rely on government support. Like a House version of the legislation, the bill would fundamentally change the structure of Medicaid, which provides health insurance to 74 million disabled or poor Americans, including nearly 40 percent of all children ...

Senate Health Care Bill Includes Deep Medicaid Cuts ...

[...] The major change to health care comes in the form of Medicaid. The bill winds down the expanded Medicaid program under Obamacare after 2020 — a longer timeline than the House health care bill that was passed in May. But it also makes deeper cuts to the program in the long run, by 2025, through changing the federal funding allocation formula for states to receive fewer federal dollars for Medicaid recipients. The bill also allows states to implement work requirements for Medicaid recipients ...

One of the groups of Americans who will be crushed by this bill is the disabled ...

People with disabilities will pay for the GOP’s Medicaid cuts

[...] It is Medicaid that provides the in-home aid who helps get an adult with quadriplegia out of bed, dressed and able to go to work in the morning. It is Medicaid that provides the in-home occupational therapist who works with the autistic child so she can live at home with her family — not be pushed into an institution. And, it is Medicaid that sends the home health nurse to check on the senior, who might otherwise have to leave the home where he lived for 30 years and raised a family to live in a single room of a nursing home.

So the Republicans’ proposal to defund and change Medicaid is the greatest threat the disability community has faced since the eugenics movement in the early 20th century.

Under the proposal passed by the House and currently before the Senate, the structure of Medicaid would change from a partnership between the federal government and state governments to a system of “per capita caps.” This means that the amount of money that the federal government provides to states would be capped, or limited, to a certain fixed amount per Medicaid recipient, based on 2016 spending levels.

The goal of these “per capita caps” is to save the federal government money — lots of money. An analysis from the Urban Institute suggests that almost half of the American Health Care Act’s $834 billion in cuts to Medicaid would come from per capita caps, devastating services to seniors, children and people with disabilities ...

I'm not sure what Republicans think when they advocate plans like this. Do they believe they and their loved ones are immune from physical disability, from financial disaster? Do they believe that good people never fall on hard times, so they and those they care about don't have to worry about ever needing help? Even if all that were true, and it's not, from the exalted position of their plenty, do they not ever feel empathy for those less fortunate, or are there lumps of coal inhabiting the place where their hearts should be? Must be coal .... it's Trump's favorite substance.