The CBO's other bombshell: the Affordable Care Ac

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The CBO's other bombshell: the Affordable Care Act isn't imploding

Oh for Christ's sake let's just get it out on the table. The GOP's R&R HC Plan is nothing more than the wish-fulfillment of Ryan's Ayn Randian wet dream. Full of platitudes, as it is, about the fairy dust of 'free markets' and 'choice' that the proposed Bill comes nowhere near to assuring. With the added insult of big wet tax cut kisses to the top 1% and to HC company execs.

All of that is becoming more clear by the hour. The plan f*cks Trump's base is all. I wondered if at least THAT much will be covered?

Oh wait, that's sexual assault. GOP dogma is that ya had it coming.

If you voted for Trump, or provided verbal or cyber support for him, you DO have it coming.

by Matthew Yglesias at Vox

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3...osion-ahca


Beyond its eye-popping findings on higher premiums and large-scale coverage loss, the Congressional Budget Office’s official score of the American Health Care Act also quietly demolishes the central publicly stated rationale for repealing the Affordable Care Act. The key passage is a somewhat jargon-full sentence on the second page of the report that says, “In CBO and JCT’s assessment, however, the nongroup market would probably be stable in most areas under either current law or the legislation.”

If that cycle were to simply continue unabated, the law really might implode. But CBO says that’s not what’s happening:

Under current law, most subsidized enrollees purchasing health insurance coverage in the nongroup market are largely insulated from increases in premiums because their out-of-pocket payments for premiums are based on a percentage of their income; the government pays the difference.

The subsidies to purchase coverage combined with the penalties paid by uninsured people stemming from the individual mandate are anticipated to cause sufficient demand for insurance by people with low health care expenditures for the market to be stable.

Translating from wonk-ese, the subsidies offered to lower-income people under ACA are scaled both to income and to the local price of health insurance. Which means that for heavily subsidized customers, the higher premiums don’t drive people out of the marketplace. And there are enough young and healthy people who qualify for generous subsidies to ensure a stable long-term risk pool.

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