The Herald-Dispatch editorial
To their credit, Congressional Republicans and GOP candidates seeking office in Congress over the last seven years have been persistent in saying they want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act enacted by Democrats and President Barack Obama.
That’s clear by the dozens of futile votes while Obama was in office, and emphasized by several failed attempts to either simply repeal Obamacare or repeal and replace it since Donald Trump became president. But since having control of both Congress and the White House, the Republicans have yet to devise a plan that will alter the health care insurance landscape without hurting millions of people. The same is true of the latest legislative proposal, called the Graham-Cassidy bill.
Fortunately, that proposal also is unlikely to go anywhere, based on U.S. Sen. John McCain’s announcement on Friday that he could not vote for the measure without “knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.” His lack of support means the measure probably won’t have the necessary votes for passage.
No complete government analysis of the GOP proposal’s impact will be available before Senate leaders had hoped to have a vote on the Cassidy-Graham bill by Sept. 30.
But two organizations have chimed in with their own studies of the potential impact, and both indicated that states in this region would take a large hit. One study, by consulting firm Avalere Health, found that the bill would lead to an overall $215 billion cut to states in federal funding for health insurance, through 2026. According to Avalere’s predictions, 34 states would see cuts by 2026.
In addition, extra money for combating the opioid epidemic is not included in the new proposal, unlike earlier Senate versions. Drug addiction is rampant in all three states, and expanded Medicaid has been viewed as crucial in their efforts to help people with drug addictions. Instead, the Avalere study says millions of people will lose insurance coverage, including more than 150,000 in the Mountain State.
GOP backers of the Cassidy-Graham bill say their goal is to give more power to states to customize health coverage, but that’s a feeble rationale for a proposal that by its very nature will leave more people without insurance coverage, either through reducing Medicaid or likely higher premiums in many cases.
The proposal should be rejected, and a bipartisan effort to fix the current system should take place, just as McCain suggested. Both Republicans and Democrats must work together earnestly toward improvements and quit worrying about trying to score political points.
See more from The Herald-Dispatch