The GOP health plan is an act of class warfare by the rich against the poor
The Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of Republicans’ plan to replace Obamacare is a description of one of the largest, most significant income redistribution programs the US government has ever considered — from the poor to the wealthy rather than the other way around.
The plan, the CBO concludes, would take more than $1 trillion away from programs targeting poor and middle-class families, to fund an $883 billion tax cut targeted at the wealthy. It is upward income redistribution of a truly massive scale.
“No legislation enacted in recent decades cut low-income programs this much — or even comes close,” Robert Greenstein, the founder and president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Washington’s leading advocate for poor and low-income Americans, says.
There are massive cuts to Medicaid: The biggest damage to the poor will come from the plan’s cuts to Medicaid, which total $880 billion over 10 years, almost exactly the same amount as the plan cuts in taxes. “By 2026, Medicaid spending would be about 25 percent less than what CBO projects under current law,” the CBO finds. The program would insure 14 million fewer people — the biggest single coverage loss caused by the Republican bill.
Under Obamacare, the Medicaid program was expanded, to cover everyone up to 138 percent of the poverty line (~$36,000 for a family of four), provided that states accepted the expansion. That meant that for the first time ever, all poor Americans in 31 states plus DC had health insurance.
No comments:
Post a Comment