Jon Chait has a brilliantly ruthless takedown of the absurd defences of the AHCA (house obamacare replacement) and BCRA (Senate version) . His main point is that Republicans are lying claimiing the huge cuts to Medicaid aren’t cuts to Medicaid and that the huge increase in the number of uninsured will actually be zero. He also criticizes Avik Roy. This quarrel has become very interesting. Roy praised the BRCA. He refused to answer when Chait asked if he...
Read More »BCRA CBO Score
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Budget Office sees 22 million more uninsured by 2026 under Senate health bill. Toher Spiro appears to be snipping and tweeting the key bits of the CBO report Premiums for a 64-year old with middle income go from $6,800 under ACA to $20,500 under BCRA Deductibles for plans eligible for tax credits go from $3,600 under ACA to $6,000 under BCRA death spiral open thread.
Read More »Welfare Reform Kills ?
This is an update of this post in which I expressed immense confidence that welfare reform killed people in Florida . The post is based on https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23733981 Muennig P1, Rosen Z, Wilde ET. (2013) “Welfare programs that target workforce participation may negatively affect mortality.” Abstract During the 1990s reforms to the US welfare system introduced new time limits on people’s eligibility to receive public assistance. These limits...
Read More »Did Conway Con Herself
This is remarkable even for the Trump administration. Kellyanne Conway claimed that the Medicaid slashing BCRA proposed by the gang of 13 doesn’t include “cuts to Medicaid”. The Trump administration position appears to be that Trump could sign it in to law and keep his promise to protect Medicaid from cuts. Wow. I am not President of the USA, but this doesn’t seem to be good strategy to me. It makes it clearer than ever that Trump will throw...
Read More »McConnell’s AHCA Kabuki
he McConnell Obamacare repeal and replace “discussion draft” is worse than I imagined possible even taking into account that it would be worse than I imagined possible. I fear he made sure it was horrible so moderate Senators could win staged battles and claim they had saved people (needless to say I am not the first to write of this possibility). I guess a vox explainer is always useful and Sarah Kliff is very smart thorough and reliable. The bill is...
Read More »McConnell’s AHCA Bill Text and WP Interpretation
I have not had a chance to read through this; but, I thought I would put this out here for all of us to read, Senate Version AHCA McConnell Updated this post with the changes proposed in the McConnell Senate Bill as taken from today’s Washington Post. Washington Post Version How Senate Republicans Plan to Dismantle Obamacare; Washington Post; Haeyoun Park and Margot Sanger – Katz; June 22, 2017
Read More »Many places in America are essentially devoid of doctors
Via Kevin MD Dr. Kenneth Lin writes another article on disappearing rural medical care. this is part of the article… I recently attended a conference in Savannah, Georgia sponsored by the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research. Since I haven’t spent much time in Georgia outside of Savannah and Atlanta, the welcoming plenary on improving health outcomes for the state’s rural and underserved populations was eye-opening. According to Dr. Keisha...
Read More »Rethinking rural hospitals
Via Journel of American Medical Association (JAMA) is an invitation us to keep looking at the plight of rural hospitals in light of decreasing rural population. Dr. Diana Mason writes: But other rural communities, home to nearly 20% of the US population, are not so fortunate. Since 2010, 78 of the more than 2150 rural nonspecialty US hospitals have closed. While the closure rate has recently declined, the proportion of financially struggling rural hospitals...
Read More »Mitch McConnell, Healthcare, and the ACA
I am always curious about why certain people make it a mission to get rid of things. I think it truly is about Addison Mitchell McConnell trying to erase the accomplishments of what the first black President Barack Obama did as the president. I did some rather easy digging and pulled up Wikipedia. here is what they said about Mitch. As a youth, Addison (Mitch) McConnell overcame polio. He received “government-provided healthcare” in Warm Springs saving him...
Read More »Dean Baker’s Articles on Healthcare
Barkley has mentioned this particular article several times now. I would be negligent if I did not post a link to it so we could read it. New Health Care Plan: Open Source Drugs, Immigrant Doctors, and a Public Option, 25 March 2017, CEPR, Beat The Press, Dean Baker. There are two obvious directions to go to get costs down for low- and middle-income families. One is to increase taxes on the wealthy. The other is to reduce the cost of health care. The latter...
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