art credit: KUT
Legal Insurrection reports [original links retained]
Full repeal or “roll
back parts of ObamaCare”?
The ObamaCare Medicaid expansion is a horrible deal for low income Americans; it’s also
where a large number of “newly covered” Americans get their new coverage.
Not only does the expansion include
“automatic” enrollment in Medicaid through ObamaCare even if it’s not wanted, but expanding
Medicaid to slightly higher income levels includes many who have managed to
acquire a home or other assets. Their home and assets, however, go to pay for
their Medicaid bills after they die. In essence, then, Medicaid functions as a loan from the federal government just as it
always has, but because the income level has been raised, more Medicaid
recipients than ever will have their assets seized to cover the cost of their
Medicaid expenses.
Despite this, some GOP governors are fighting
their own party to keep the Medicaid expansion in their states.
Republican governors who reaped the benefits
of Obamacare now find themselves in an untenable position — fighting GOP
lawmakers in Washington to protect their states’ health coverage.
. . . . President-elect Donald Trump
heaped more pressure on lawmakers to find a resolution of the issue this week
when he vowed to “repeal and replace Obamacare essentially simultaneously”
after the Senate confirms Rep. Tom Price, his pick for Health and Human
Services secretary.
But Trump’s push comes as at least five of
the 16 Republican governors of states that took federal money to expand
Medicaid are advocating to keep it or warning GOP leaders of disastrous
consequences if the law is repealed without a replacement that keeps millions
of people covered. They include Govs. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Rick
Snyder of Michigan, John Kasich of Ohio,
Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Brian Sandoval of Nevada.
The governors explain why they want to keep
the Medicaid expansion in their states.
Politico continues:
“We are now able to provide health insurance
to 700,000 people,” said Kasich, who circumvented his state Legislature to
enact expansion in 2013 and who was the sole GOP presidential candidate in 2016
to defend that portion of Obamacare.
“Let’s just say they just got rid of it,
didn’t replace it with anything,” he said. “What happens to the 700,000 people?
What happens to drug treatment? What happens to mental health counseling? What
happens to these people who have very high cholesterol and are victims from a heart
attack? What happens to them?”
. . .
Part of Kasich’s argument is that the federal
taxpayer dollars his state gets for Medicaid expansion is “our money,” that of
Ohioans.
Hot Air explains this is not exactly the case:
Expanding Medicaid, Kasich has said, allowed
him to “bring Ohio money back home,” preventing other states from getting $13
billion of “Ohioans’ federal tax dollars” in the first seven years. He
circumvented a legislative ban on Obamacare expansion, waving off concerns
about the cost with appeals to his experience in Congress in the
’90s.
In just three years, Kasich’s Obamacare
expansion cost $11.3 billion, and not a penny of that new federal spending was
“Ohio money” that would have otherwise gone to another state.
It’s not clear what President-elect Trump or
the GOP Congress plan to do with or about the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion
should they indeed succeed in repealing the entire law rather than picking and choosing what parts to to keep and what
to “roll back.”
State Issue 3, a public vote on
passage of the Healthcare Freedom Amendment in Ohio, passed overwhelmingly in
all 88 Ohio counties. In Cuyahoga County, the Amendment passed 202,010
votes (58.24%) to 144,908 votes (41.76%). [Source: Ohio GOP]
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