A major component of the Affordable Care Act – also known as Obamacare – is the expanded coverage of Medicaid for poor Americans. And according to analysis by the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center, a Republican repeal of Obamacare could cost up to 13 million children their health coverage.
[AdSense-A]
In addition to the millions who have been able to purchase health coverage through Obamacare because of the subsidies for middle-class Americans, Obamacare provided states generous federal funding to expand Medicaid. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have adopted the expanded Medicaid coverage – extending health coverage to millions of poor Americans and their children.
However, now that Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives they are preparing for a repeal of Obamacare using budgetary maneuvers that will allow the Senate to pass repeal with a simple majority vote.
Millions could lose their coverage if Republicans repeal Obamacare
Despite the fact that Republicans have yet provide any alternative to Obamacare, they continue to barrel towards repeal. According to the Urban Institue’s Health Policy Center, millions will lose eligibility for their health coverage if Republicans repeal the funding components of Obamacare.
“We find that 4.4 million children and 7.6 million parents could lose coverage in 2019 if Congress’s budget reconciliation process repeals pieces of the ACA without a replacement plan,” the Urban Institute wrote in a report called “Partial Repeal of the ACA through Reconciliation: Coverage Implications for Parents and Children.”
“Under the repeal bill, states would be able to reduce Medicaid and CHIP eligibility for children beginning in 2017 . We find that up to 9 million more children could lose coverage if states lower Medicaid/CHIP eligibility to the new minimum standards.”
Republicans have begun to suggest that their new plan is to pass an Obamacare repeal that would include a so-called transition period, while they try to figure out what their plan is to replace it. Many have noted that it is all but impossible that Republicans will come up with an alternative plan that will extend coverage to as many Americans as Obamacare has done.
House Speaker Paul Ryan told 60 Minutes that Congress would repeal the law next month. “We will pass a budget and that budget in the beginning of this first session in January will put in place the budget mechanism that we need to repeal Obamacare while we work on an orderly transition to replace it with something much, much better.”
[AdSense-B]
Advocates for the uninsured and health care academics who study health care are trying to sound the alarm about dire consequences that will come from an Obamacare repeal.
According to the Urban Institute report, if Republicans use the partial repeal “modeled on the reconciliation bill” the Medicaid expansion would be “struck down.” In addition, the tax credits and “cost-sharing assistance” that make health coverage affordable for middle-class Americans who purchase on the public exchanges.
“In every state, the number of uninsured children in 2019 would be higher under partial repeal than it would be under the ACA,” the Urban Institute report states.
Advocacy groups for hospitals, doctors and insurance companies have already started lobbying Congress to not pass legislation that would reduce the number of Americans with health coverage.
And states like California, where Obamacare implementation has been resoundingly successful at extending coverage to the uninsured, would lose billions of federal dollars. According to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, California alone would lose over $20 billion in federal funding if Medicaid expansion is repealed. Meaning that the state’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, and the Affordable Care Act expansion has covered 3.7 million Californians. “California has made tremendous gains since 2014 in reducing inequities in access to health insurance,” according Laurel Lucia, co-author of the report. “If Congress repeals the ACA, those historic coverage gains would be reversed.”
[AdSense-C]
