The Congressional Budget Office released its report on the American Health Care Act, which has led to high criticism of changing our health system. Senator Schumer has called it sad, a war on seniors, and a gain for the wealthiest Americans, all of these remarks have been repeated over and over by other Democrats and outsiders. Democrats seem to forget that no one asked for AHCA (Obamacare), which has proven to be a disaster and will only get worse in the future. They also seem to forget that Republicans have control of the White House, in both chambers, due to the fact that there was a call to Repeal and Replace AHCA.
Earlier this month, Orrin Hatch, Chairman of the Finance Committee, stated that the committee has jurisdiction over taxes, Medicaid, and the Social Security Act, and has seen the rising cost of AHCA to a point that many Americans cannot afford health care. The need to repeal and replace has become essential. He stated in his address to Congress that one of the main failures of AHCA (Obamacare), is the fact that those who passed this lengthy health care plan, failed to address all health care costs.
People would chose not to be covered
As the Democrats and others remark on the Cbo report, they seem to leave out certain facts, like the 14-24 million people that would be uninsured due to the fact that they themselves would more than likely choose to drop their insurance, either because they would no longer have to worry about a tax penalty, or would no longer wish to pay the high premiums and deductibles.
“CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 14 million more people would be uninsured under the legislation than under current law. Most of that increase would stem from repealing the penalties associated with the individual mandate. Some of those people would choose not to have insurance because they chose to be covered by insurance under current law only to avoid paying the penalties, and some people would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums.”
The CBO noted that the increase of those without insurance would also come from the changes in Medicaid enrollment, as states would discontinue their expansion of eligibility, right away or in the future, after AHC is passed, because Medicaid spending programs would be capped.
Repeal and replace estimates uncertain
Those criticizing the new health plan also will not reveal that in the CBO report it states that due to the uncertainty of how affected parties would respond to changes made in the health care plan, the projections and estimates made in the report are uncertain. So maybe this report should be taken with a grain of salt at this point, seeing that repeal and replace consists of three parts, which means that as legislation works, any imperfections will be addressed.
