Trumpcare: Who Will Suffer Under the New Plan?

For the past several years, the GOP has vocalized their opposition to Obamacare. Now that they have control of Congress and the Executive branches, they’re finally doing something about it.

The American Health Care Act, coined “Trumpcare,” is the Republicans’ response to the “failed” Obamacare.

Why Repeal Obamacare?

According to the GOP, Obamacare is collapsing, and it must be repealed in order to protect Americans. They point to health insurance premiums that were created by the law that increased markedly this year. Why? Insurers didn’t anticipate so many medical claims would be filed by their consumers. If you believe the GOP’s argument, Obamacare is unsustainable and will eventually leave millions without health care. According to the Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, it is an “act of mercy” introducing a new health care bill.

But the proposed Trumpcare would actually leave millions more uninsured. Under Obamacare, most people are still able to get health plans for less than $100 due to subsidies provided under the plan, which taxes the wealthy in order to provide health insurance plans to the masses. Trumpcare no longer will tax the wealthy to help subsidize health care for those who struggle to pay for health insurance.

Who Will Suffer Under Trumpcare?

Trumpcare will leave millions of people without health insurance. It will potentially leave 14 million Americans uninsured under the new health care bill than under Obamacare in 2018, rising to 24 million by 2026.

There are also specific groups of people who will be most negatively impacted by Trumpcare.

Low-income Elderly

According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”), the American Health Care Act would be devastating to older Americans who obtain their insurance from the individual market. While the proposed bill will lower overall premiums in the individual market by 10 percent by 2026 as compared to Obamacare, the premium amounts depend on age and income. Specifically, a younger and presumably healthy person could pay less in premiums than an elderly person with many ailments.

The CBO gave this example: a person with an annual income of $26,500 that is 21 years would pay on average $1,700 in premiums for insurance on Obamacare, but on Trumpcare, that same person would pay $1,450. Sounds great, right?

But if that person is 64 years old with the same annual income of $26,500, he would still pay $1,700 in premiums under Obamacare, but pay a whopping $14,600 in premiums under Trumpcare. That’s more than half of his income toward medical premiums. For most, that is prohibitively expensive.

Women on Medicaid

The amount of women on Medicaid who seeks contraceptive care will lose that care in enormous numbers. The Trumpcare proposal plans to defund Planned Parenthood for one year. It will prohibit patients from using their Medicaid coverage at Planned Parenthood. Medicaid is a government program that helps low-income people obtain medical coverage.

Defunding Planned Parenthood will affect services that help women avert pregnancies. Moreover, there are few health care clinics or medical practitioners that are willing to serve the low-income population. Restricting access to contraceptive care can lead to several thousand more births to children that will eventually be on Medicaid themselves. Ultimately, this could cost as much as $21 million in 2017.

Trump Supporters

Ironically, Trumpcare will severely hurt many of those that voted for him. Research shows that the Trump voter does better under Obamacare than Trumpcare. How can this be? Most of the people who voted for Trump were older, lower-income citizens. It appears that despite all his promises regarding health care to his voters, Obama did more for them than Trump. When confronted with this reality in an interview, President Trump responded, “Oh, I know.” Go figure.