| Today's Managing Health Care Costs Number is 924,000 |
AHCA Job Losses by State
The Senate continues to push toward a July 4 deadline to complete its work on the American Health Care Act (AHCA), and most reports suggest that the bill is likely to look much like the House version, which would cut $800 billion from Medicaid, allow states to opt out of the Affordable Care Act insurance reforms that protect those with preexisting conditions, and lead to 23 million more Americans without health insurance.
Of course, we don't really know, since there have been no hearings and there is no proposed language for the bill that has been released to the public. As Stephen Colbert said, the Republican bill is "as secret as the next season of Game of Thrones, but more people will die."
The Commonwealth Fund published research from George Washington University last week that showed the likely impact of the AHCA on Gross Domestic Product and employment by state.
The results demonstrate why the Republicans want to pass this bill in secret.
The researchers projected that the large tax cut would initially create as many as 864,000 new jobs shortly after the bill passed -but by 2026 the legislation would have destroyed 924,000 jobs - about 3/4 of them in health care. Further, business output would be lower by $148 billion and gross state product (I think that's the GDP by state) would be down by $93 billion.
This doesn't even include the additional $600m cut in Medicaid in Trump's 2018 fiscal year budget proposal.
The Trump Administration is proposing tax cuts that will only be responsible if we achieve a 3% GDP growth. Never mind the millions who will be harmed by lack of health insurance, this is a poor start on increasing our economic growth rate. I continue to be hopeful that moderate Republicans will insist on enough concessions that the conservative fringe of the Republican party will choose to forego the ACA repeal.
The Republicans decried Obamacare as "job killing," and Donald Trump claimed that repeal would lead to 2 million new jobs. That's a certifiable alt-fact.
 |
| Source |
EmoticonEmoticon