Studies show that more than 650,000 people in Washington and 200,000 in Idaho could lose Medicaid and other health care coverage in the next 10 years under the U.S. Senate’s latest proposal to change the nation’s health care system.
Washington could also lose about $17 billion in federal funding over that time period, though Idaho could actually break even in federal funds through a change in the formulas for sending federal money to the states. Those are the conclusions of two separate studies of the new bill, known as Graham-Cassidy, that could get a vote in the Senate by the end of the month.
The short schedule for the vote means that the Congressional Budget Office won’t have time to do the extensive analysis that it conducted for some previous bills designed to make major changes in the Affordable Care Act. But the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan progressive research group, combined some of its analysis with previous studies by the budget office and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.
Avalere, a company that studies the health care system, estimates the federal government will reduce payments to the states by gradually removing some of the Obamacare provisions for Medicaid expansion, tax credits, cost sharing, mandates, and the Basic Health Plan, and substitute a system of block grants to the states. (Spokesman-Review)
