The current version of Trumpcare—the one negotiated last week by popular vote loser Donald Trump with conservatives to woo votes for passage—hasn't yet been scored by the Congressional Budget Office, even though it's slated for a vote Thursday. The thing is, though, nothing in those changes is likely to make the bottom line any better for people who are going to lost health insurance under Trumpcare. Any changes made to try to make tax credits better will be offset by the sped-up cuts to Medicaid, says the Brookings Institute.
We conclude that the changes made by the manager’s amendment will not meaningfully alter CBO’s earlier prediction that the AHCA would substantially reduce insurance coverage. While one provision of the manager’s amendment would slightly relax the “per capita cap” on state Medicaid spending created under the AHCA and thereby modestly increase CBO’s estimate of insurance coverage under the AHCA, the work requirement and block grant options created by the manager’s amendment have the potential to cause additional coverage losses that largely or more than offset this improvement, at least if states take up these options.
The change to the medical expense deduction in the manager’s amendment is likely to have a negligible effect on CBO’s coverage estimates. Some reports have suggested that this provision was inserted as a placeholder and that the intent of Republican leaders is for the Senate to remove this provision and use the savings—roughly $75 billion over ten years—to increase individual market tax credits for older enrollees in some unspecified way. Naturally, unspecified future changes will not be incorporated in CBO’s analysis of the current version of the legislation. However, given the relatively limited amount of money involved, we conclude that future changes along these lines would be likely to only marginally increase CBO’s estimate of the level of insurance coverage under the AHCA.
So, yeah, 4 million people could lose insurance this year, 14 million next year, 24 million in a decade. Still. That doesn't even really get to the awfulness of those cuts: the destruction of Medicaid. In fact, this whole exercise could be nothing more than the fulfillment of sociopath Paul Ryan's frat-boy "dream" of cutting Medicaid. And with it the health and the lives of millions.
The House is scheduled to vote on Trumpcare on THURSDAY, MARCH 23. Even if you already called your member of Congress, do it again by calling the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Jam the phone lines, urge them to vote NO.