The fundamental thing to understand about Senate Republicans’ latest attempt to repeal Obamacare is that the bill under consideration would not just undo the Affordable Care Act—it would also end Medicaid as we know it and our federal government’s half-century commitment to closing the country’s yawning gaps in health coverage. And it would do so without putting in place any credible resources or policies to replace the system it is overturning. If our country enacts this bill, it would be an act of mass suicide.
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Virtually all of us, as we age, will develop serious health conditions. A critical test of any health reform, therefore, is whether it improves or reduces our prospects of having the continuous care and medicines we need when we come to have a chronic illness. The Graham-Cassidy bill fails this test. It will terminate Medicaid coverage and insurance subsidies for some twenty million people. The entire individual-insurance market will be thrown into a tailspin. Federal protections for insurance coverage will be gone.
Every major group representing patients, health-care professionals, health-care institutions, and insurers has come out vociferously against this plan. Governors from Alaska to Ohio to Virginia have https://www.colorado.gov/governor/sites/default/files/bipartisan_governors_letter_re_graham-cassidy_9-19-17.pdf the bill. In a highly unusual, bipartisan statement, the national association representing the http://medicaiddirectors.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/namd-statement-on-graham-cassidy9_21_17.pdf of all fifty states has also opposed the bill. The top health official in Louisiana, Cassidy’s home state, has opposed the new plan. There is not a single metric of health or health care that the Graham-Cassidy plan makes better. This bill is a national calamity. It should not even come to a vote.