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TrumpCare: Higher Premiums and “Really Crappy Coverage”

This image says it all. In addition to a terrible CBO score, a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation on TrumpCare found that people who buy insurance through the ACA exchanges would have to pay 74 percent more on average to get equivalent coverage. See more from Huffington Post below. 

“…Analysts at the nonprofit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation have crunched the numbers and come to a very different perspective on what the Senate Republican bill would do. People who now buy insurance on healthcare.gov or a state exchange like Covered California would have to pay 74 percent more on average to get equivalent coverage, Kaiser’s analysts found.”

“It does mean that the Republicans aren’t telling the full story about why premiums would come down 20 percent under their plan ― and what it would actually mean for people buying coverage. Simply put, if Republicans get their way, then insurance policies will tend to cover less care, and fewer people with serious medical problems will be carrying insurance.

“‘I think it’s fair to say that most people in the individual market today would be worse off.’ Cynthia Cox, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.”

“By far the worst off were the oldest consumers, particularly those with the lowest incomes. Americans near retirement age and living close to the poverty line could, according to the Kaiser analysis, expect to pay $272 a month rather than $69 under the ACA ― nearly four times as much.”

“Other consumers would keep getting coverage, but in order to afford premiums within their means they’d have to take policies with higher out-of-pocket costs in the form of bigger co-payments and deductibles, or plans without key benefits like mental health coverage, which Obamacare mandates but the Republican plan would make optional, albeit at each state’s discretion.”

“But that’s not how Republicans have promoted their agenda for the last few years. Instead, they attacked Affordable Care Act plans as too expensive and vowed, as President Donald Trump did on the campaign trail, to create a system that would offer ‘great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost.’”

“The new analysis of the Republican bill shows how empty that promise was. For a fraction of the cost, you also get a fraction of the health care.”