It took Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a few minutes to release a statement after the Congressional Budget Office released its verdict on the Senate Republican healthcare bill, and no wonder. When your bill will leave 22 million people without health coverage within a decade, 15 million of them by next year, you have to be careful what you say. Here's what McConnell came up with:
Americans need relief from the failed Obamacare law. The Senate will soon take action on a bill that the Congressional Budget Office just confirmed will reduce the growth in premiums under Obamacare, reduce taxes on the middle class, and reduce the deficit. The American people need better care now, and this legislation includes the necessary tools to provide it.
About that reduction in premium growth:
And reduced taxes on the middle class? If you consider people making $200,000 and above to be middle class, then sure. Because tax cuts start at income levels of $200,000 a year—not exactly middle class if you’re living in reality—and while people making between $200,000 and $500,000 a year get a tax cut of 0.2 percent of their income, that number rises to 0.8 percent of income for people making between $500,000 and $1 million, and two percent for people making more than $1 million. So even if you’re rich enough to get anything at all—and $200,000 a year places you solidly in the top 10 percent of American incomes—the real money goes to people making more than $1 million.
Also, don’t you love how “better care” is almost an afterthought in McConnell’s statement? Which is still more of an emphasis on good care than exists in his actual bill—the Senate’s Trumpcare would make health coverage worse for most of us even after it’s done booting 22 million people off of insurance.