Jordan Weissman of Slate sums up Republican senators’ proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act.
Medicaid is America’s largest health insurance program by enrollment. It covers 62 million Americans—almost as many as Medicare and the entire individual market combined. It helps the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and—thanks to Obamacare’s expansion of it, which Republicans would roll back—many working-class families. As the New York Times recently noted, it insures about half of all births and 40 percent of children. It is indispensible, and Senate Republicans are planning to throttle it.
As with the nation, so with Illinois. The bill has not yet been scored. An earlier House bill from the GOP, which treated Medicaid more generously that this one, would put nearly a million Illinoisans at risk of losing health coverage and would eliminate coverage requirements for pregnancy and mental illness.
This is a grave development for Illinois, yet the state’s governor, fearful as ever of the consequences of candor, has admitted that his state “won‘t do very well” — as you would expect when a Republican governor fails to press his own party so it does better.
This article appears in Jun 22-28, 2017.
