Sleeper issue of Medicaid could prove to be ACHA's stumbling block

[pnwmom]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/sleeper-issue-of-medicaids-future-could-prove-health-care-plans-stumbling-block/2017/03/12/d5fe2342-05af-11e7-b1e9-a05d3c21f7cf_story.html?utm_term=.747a2f2eebb3

As House Republicans hurtle toward shifting the nation’s health-care system onto a more conservative path, nearly lost so far in the roiling debate over their plans is the profound impact they would have on insurance for the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable residents.

The proposed American Health Care Act would break with the government’s half-century compact with states in helping to finance Medicaid, which covers 68 million low-income people, including children, pregnant women and those who are elderly or disabled.The House GOP’s legislation would end the system in which the government pays each state a specific share of all its Medicaid costs and instead would provide a fixed sum for each beneficiary — no matter how much or little of the costs that funding covered.

These stark changes to the underpinning of the nation’s health-care safety net were seldom broached by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the panel with jurisdiction over Medicaid, as it met for 27 hours straight before approving the legislation last week. But they could prove to be the biggest stumbling block to Republicans’ efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act — especially if the plans move on to the Senate.

“Medicaid is probably 50 times more complicated and controversial” than the ACA’s insurance marketplaces, said Tom Scully, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under former president George W. Bush. “It’s way more money, it affects far more people, it’s more about state to state spending and not just partisan politics.”

SNIP

[flamingdem]

1. 68 million people

Where is the outcry again?

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[Wounded Bear]

3. What really frosts my ass about his whole clusterfuck...

is that most of the "problems" associated with Medicaid and the ACA are in states where the fucking Republicans blocked the Medicaid expansion and gave no or minimal support to setting up the exchanges.

Where states cooperated and actually put in the effort, things are pretty good. Sure, they could use some tweaks, but shit is no where near as bad as Trump wants his minions to believe.

And, of course, we live in a world where 35% of our population live fact free lives.

[Stand and Fight]

4. AHCA not ACHA. n/t