Alaska (along with Hawaii) will continue to receive Obamacare’s premium tax credits while they are repealed for all other states. It appears this exemption will not affect Alaska receiving its state allotment under the new block grant in addition to the premium tax credits.
Delays implementation of the Medicaid per capita caps for Alaska and Hawaii for years in which the policy would reduce their funding below what they would have received in 2020 plus CPI-M [Consumer Price Index for Medical Care].
Provides for an increased federal Medicaid matching rate (FMAP) for both Alaska and Hawaii."
Well, now.
Bird doesn't have the actual legislative text, but they threw Hawaii in there as well (not to win their votes...Dems Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono are solid NOs no matter what). That means that the wording is probably along the lines of:
The Congressional Budget Office stated that they won't be able to provide a full score of the projected 10-year impact of the Graham-Cassidy bill for "at least several weeks". Instead, they expect to provide a partial score, focusing purely on the budget-related stuff necessary to "count" towards Senate reconciliation voting rules "early next week".
What won't be included are some pretty damned important details, like:
Impact on the federal deficit
Impact on insurance premiums, and of course...
Impact on the number of people with health insurance coverage
Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans are insisting on squeezing the vote on Graham-Cassidy through within the next 10 days, before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30th, since that's the only way they have a chance at passing it using 50 votes (after the 30th, they would require 60 votes, which of course they have no chance at getting).
I've embedded screen shots below, but there's various interactive stuff you can do at the site itself; LA did a very nice job, I'd love it if every state put up a similar "dashboard" style website.
In short:
434,594 Louisianans enrolled in Medicaid via ACA expansion
126,229 have received preventative care
22,058 women have received breast cancer screenings
225 women have been diagnosed with breast cancer as a result of ACA Medicaid expansion
13,994 adults have received a colon cancer screening
4,337 have averted colon cancer by having polyps removed
199 have been diagnosed with colon cancer thanks to ACA Medicaid expansion
3,774 have been diagnosed with diabetes
9,575 have been diagnosed with hypertension
32,912 are receiving outpatient mental health services
6,025 are receiving inpatient mental health services
5,559 are receiving outpatient substance abuse services
6,026 are receiving residential substance abuse services
As NBC News reporter Hallie Jackson notes, there are too many quotable lines to count in this Vox piece, in which Jeff Stein tracked down 9 Republican Senators to ask them what the hell the purpose of the Graham-Cassidy bill actually is. The responses pretty much say it all.
Jeff Stein: Senator, I wanted to ask you for a policy-based explanation for why you’re moving forward with the Graham-Cassidy proposal. What problems will this solve in the health care system?
Pat Roberts: That — that is the last stage out of Dodge City...I’m from Dodge City. So it’s the last stage out to do anything. Restoring decision-making back to the states is always a good idea, but this is not the best possible bill — this is the best bill possible under the circumstances.
If we do nothing, I think it has a tremendous impact on the 2018 elections. And whether or not Republicans still maintain control and we have the gavel.
Jeff Stein: But why does this bill make things better for Americans? How does it help?
The fact that the Graham-Cassidy bill, like all of the prior Republican "replacement" healthcare bills, screws over people on both Medicaid and the individual market starting in 2020 is hardly news. A few provisions of the ACA are stripped out and/or bastardized immediately (and some, like the individual mandate penalty, are even repealed retroactively), but for the most part the pain doesn't start for another 2 years, well after the midterms are over.
However, JP Massar called something to my attention this morning:
Regular readers know that one of the issues I've spent the better part of the past year yammering on about endlessly is the importance of Congress formally appropriating Cost Sharing Reduction reimbursement payments to the insurance carriers on the individual market exchanges.
Thanks to the ongoing/pending ruling in the federal House vs. Burwell Price lawsuit, Donald Trump has the ability to pull the plug on CSR payments pretty much whenever he wants to (and he's threatened to cut them off every month since around March or April so far). CSR payments hang like a Sword of Damocles over the heads of every exchange-based insurance carrier each month, with them never knowing whether they'll get reimbursed or not.
CBO aims to provide preliminary assessment of Graham-Cassidy bill by early next week
CBO is aiming to provide a preliminary assessment of the Graham-Cassidy bill by early next week. That assessment, which is being prepared with the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, will include whether the legislation would reduce on-budget deficits by at least as much as was estimated for H.R. 1628, the American Health Care Act, as passed by the House on May 4, 2017; whether Titles I and II in the legislation would each save at least $1 billion; and whether the bill would increase on-budget deficits in the long term. CBO will provide as much qualitative information as possible about the effects of the legislation, however CBO will not be able to provide point estimates of the effects on the deficit, health insurance coverage, or premiums for at least several weeks.
OK, Indivisible is all over the Graham-Cassidy disaster, so rather than try and cobble together my own action list, I'm cribbing from their email missive. I'll also be posting the latest Graham-Cassidy developments throughout the day.
STOP THE RETURN OF TRUMPCARE. TrumpCare is back and Republicans are as close as they’ve ever been to passing it. There are 12 days left for the Senate to ram healthcare through reconciliation with just 50 votes. This is TrumpCare’s last stand. Call your senators ASAP and tell them to vote no on “Graham-Cassidy” using all the latest resources at TrumpCareTen.org.
TrumpCare is back. REPEAT: TrumpCare is back. We really hoped we’d never have to say that, but you should know by now that this is the bill that just won’t die. Because of the rules of reconciliation, the special process Republicans are using to jam TrumpCare through the Senate, they have until September 30 to finish the job of repealing the Affordable Care Act. That gives them 12 more days to make good on their seven-year promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And nothing motivates Congress like a deadline.
For the next two weeks, ALL HEALTHCARE-RELATED ATTENTION needs to be on the following three issues:
FIRST:September 27th is the final deadline for ACA exchange insurance carriers to actually sign the contracts to participate in the 2018 Open Enrollment Period. Yes, the deadline to submit their rate filings already passed a week or so ago, and most of them are fairly settled in for next year, but until they actually sign the contract, they can still bail from the individual and/or small business exchanges...and given the massive uncertainty over Cost Sharing Reduction reimbursements and other sabotage efforts of Trump and Tom Price as well as the ongoing repeal/replace saga by the Congressional GOP, many (most?) of the carriers are deliberately waiting until the last possible minute to do so.
