"A few days ago the tweeter in chief demanded that Congress enact ‘a beautiful new HealthCare bill’ before it goes into recess. But now we’ve seen Mitch McConnell’s latest version of health ‘reform,’ and ‘beautiful’ is hardly the word for it. In fact, it’s surpassingly ugly, intellectually and morally. Previous iterations of Trumpcare were terrible, but this one is, incredibly, even worse.
Before I get to what makes it worse, let’s talk about the one piece of the new bill that may sound like a step in the right direction, and why it’s largely a scam.
The original Senate bill got a lot of justified bad press for slashing Medicaid while offering big tax cuts for the rich. So this version rolls back some though by no means all of those tax cuts, which sounds like a concession to moderates.
At the same time, however, the bill would allow people to use tax-favored health savings accounts to pay insurance premiums. This effectively creates a big new tax shelter that mostly helps people with high incomes who (a) can afford to put a lot of money into such accounts and (b) face high marginal tax rates, and hence get big tax savings.
Still, this tax shuffle does give McConnell a bit more money to play with. So how does he address the two big problems with the original bill — savage cuts to Medicaid and soaring premiums for older, less affluent workers? He doesn’t.
Aside from a few tweaks, those brutal Medicaid cuts are still part of the plan — and yes, they are cuts, despite desperate Republican attempts to pretend that they aren’t. The subsidy cuts that would send premiums soaring for millions are also still there…."
(Via.). The Cruelty and Fraudulence of Mitch McConnell’s Health Bill - The New York Times:
No comments:
Post a Comment