I don’t have much to add because Joy covers this beautifully. Only that all the “savings” this congressman claims will occur won’t be until after 10 years of rate increases according to the CBO. By that point having 10% lower premiums after they’ve gone up 20% for year after year is pretty meaningless.
Here’s a bit of the transcript via Crooks and Liars.
Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) probably wished he was better prepared for his Sunday MSNBC interview about Republican plans to reform health care after host Joy-Ann Reid's questioning left him stuttering and unable to present a credible defense.
Appearing on Reid's Sunday morning program, Carter immediately got off to a rocky start after the MSNBC host asked how Georgia would be "better off" with nearly 500,000 people losing their Obamacare coverage.
"Medicaid expansion allows up to 138 percent of the poverty rate," Reid pointed out. "By definition, you are working. They are the working poor. They have jobs that may be part time, they may be hourly. These are working people... If they don't have the money to buy insurance, and you say they shouldn't get Medicaid, how would they take advantage of all these new choices? They don't have any money."
In defense of House Speaker Paul Ryan's (R-WI) plan, Carter asserted incorrectly that the government was hurting poor people by subjecting them to an insurance mandate under Obamacare.
Reid wasn't having it: "I'm talking about this population that you said shouldn't be on Medicaid -- the 400,000 people in your state plus the currently 111,000 uninsured -- you're saying they're going to get more choices. But these people, by definition, are working. They are poor, they don't have the money to buy insurance. So how would giving them more choices help them if they don't have the money to buy any of the choices?"
"First of all, I would question whether they're all working," Carter replied.
"Let's me stop again," Reid interrupted. "You can't panhandle your way to 138 percent of the poverty rate. You're a working person. They're working -- 138 percent of the poverty rate, by definition, is a working person."
Carter noted that the Republican plan provided tax credits to poor people who buy insurance, although those credits are less generous than the subsidies provided under President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act.
"So, you're saying they should wait until April 15th of each year?" Reid shot back. "And then in the tax refund they get each year, somehow even though they can't [afford insurance] now -- these people who are the working poor."
Limiting Medicaid so that it doesn’t go to the “able bodied who aren’t working” was never the point of Medicaid, it’s healthcare for the poor, period. The refundable tax credit their offering is a fraction of what is currently available, the “market forces” they’re depending on to make these credits effective are not included in this bill because they fracks know it couldn’t get a vote in the Senate.
Also it wouldn’t work because it’s already been tried and failed.
If Trump and his GOPer sycophants have their way 24 Million will lose care resulting in the deaths of between 25,000-36,000 per year. That is what their arguing desperately to implement.
Enjoy.