I have a new piece out with Sublation on the failure of the left to remain faithful to Medicare for All. There’s no paywall. You can read it here: https://www.sublationmag.com/post/medicare-for-all-requiem-for-a-dream
The CBO has released its report on the senate’s version of Trumpcare and the numbers are once again pretty grim–22 million additional Americans would be without insurance by 2026. 15 million of the 22 million would already be kicked out by the 2018 midterms. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thought he could get Senate moderates to vote for the bill by delaying its Medicaid cuts, but the cuts are even larger than the House bill’s when they do come. There is deep opposition to this bill within the Republican ranks, and I seriously doubt whether the Republicans are capable of passing this bill, or any other major healthcare bill, for that matter. Continue reading “There’s a Good Chance Obamacare Won’t Be Repealed”
Today a new, more conservative version of Trumpcare passed in the House, by a vote of 217-213. All the Democrats voted against it, with 20 Republican members defecting to join them. This might be concerning for some, but the changes the Republicans made to get the bill through the House will make it even harder for them to get a bloc of moderate Republican senators to cooperate with them.
Continue reading “Trumpcare Probably Won’t Get Past the Senate”
Trumpcare has been defeated, and it went down meekly, failing even to receive a vote in the house. But this is not over–ever since Obamacare was passed, the Republicans have taken a variety of low-profile steps to weaken the law and make it less effective. Their hope now is that if they wait, the damage they’ve inflicted and continue to inflict on the system will cause it to unravel, giving them an opportunity to try again.
Continue reading “What’s Next for the Healthcare Debate After Trumpcare”
A couple weeks ago, we talked about how the American Health Care Act (Trumpcare) would undermine the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by weakening the individual mandate and distributing flat subsidies indexed to age rather than income. The CBO confirmed the level of damage this would do, estimating that 24 million additional Americans would lose coverage by 2026, increasing the uninsured population from 28 million to 52 million. But these projected losses are not wholly attributed to the changes to the mandate and the subsidies–they are also attributed to a provision of Trumpcare which block grants Medicaid. So today I want to talk about how Trumpcare changes the way Medicaid works.
Benjamin Studebaker 