GA Congressmen on the American Health Care Act
Rep. Rick Allen (R, GA-12) shared his thoughts on the recently introduced American Health Care Act, which can be read HERE.
“From the beginning, I have always said my goal is to restore patient-centered, cost-effective and market-driven solutions to our health care system. Standing by this goal, the introduction of the American Health Care Act is the next big and needed step in the repeal and replacement process. I look forward to reviewing this bill and working with my colleagues as they markup the first draft to produce a final product that will rescue Americans and American families from the binds of our failing health care system. Americans deserve better than Obamacare—plain and simple.”
Statements from Rep. Bishop and Rep. Collins can be seen after the break.
Rep. Sanford D. Bishop (D, GA-2):
“With the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, the United States joined the rest of the industrialized world in providing health care coverage for its citizens. In Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District, the implementation of the ACA has led to a 4.7% drop in the uninsured rate. It has guaranteed that the over 550,000 individuals with health insurance in the district, both public and private, have access to preventive services like cancer screenings and flu shots without any co-pay. It has provided all policyholders with important consumer protections such as coverage for pre-existing conditions and prohibitions on lifetime limits, and it has helped close the Medicare prescription drug donut hole.
“Instead of working to improve on the progress we have made, House Republicans have proposed a bill that would jeopardize the ability of our citizens to lead healthy and productive lives. Their plan would eliminate a number of the vital protections provided by the ACA. Uninsured rates would rise, health care costs would increase, and millions of Americans both in Georgia and across the country would lose their access to important health care services. It makes little sense for Congress to be rushing headlong into this disastrous policy that could significantly impact so many lives.”
Rep. Doug Collins (R, GA-9):
“With the American Health Care Act, our unified government has begun the process of doing what we promised to do—repealing and replacing the disaster that is Obamacare. We’ve listened to the millions of Americans hurt by the misnamed Affordable Care Act and those whose hopes were dashed by its broken promises.
“The process of making quality health care affordable and accessible for every American starts with the repeal of Obamacare, with removing the government from the doctor/patient relationship and giving the insurance market the opportunity to rebuild from the havoc Obamacare has wrought on it. On this front, the repeal of the individual mandate is crucial. It means that people can have access to the health care that works best for them, instead of being forced by the government into expensive insurance plans that keep substantive health care out of reach. Moreover, Republicans are remembering both our neighbors and our future neighbors: The American Health Care Act prohibits federal money from flowing to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.
“President Trump has a common-sense approach to health care reform and has said that this bill is the first step in that process. Our unified government has moved to stop the suffering caused by Obamacare, and I look forward to considering the American Health Care Act in the House.”
About Author
lawtonsack
Lawton is a graduate of Georgia Southern University (the GSU) with a degree in Information Technology. He has held numerous positions within the Georgia Republican Party throughout the years.
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So, will the CBO score be available before or after the bill passes the House?
Before, it should be out within the next week.
Rep. Carter was on Morning Edition to discuss it this morning. I don’t have a transcript, but something that stuck in my craw was how he characterized people who have lapses in coverage as “trying to game the system” as opposed to being ordinary people who may have lost a job that provided coverage, as a way to justify allowing insurance companies to increase their premiums when they finally do get coverage. With insurance already being expensive, I imagine that additional 30% would have the effect of having people wait even longer to buy insurance, and in fact incentivize “gaming the system”.
One of the problems with ACA was that some folks do wait until they are sick to get coverage. Allowing insurers to charge more for the first year if there is a significant gap in coverage will incentive folks to stay insured. Unfortunately, there are some irresponsible folks that will still wait until illness to get coverage. Also, folks that leave a job are still eligible for COBRA.
“One of the problems with ACA was that some folks do wait until they are sick to get coverage. ”
Can you point to any data that bolsters this statement?
Kaiser estimates at least 27% of adult (under 65) had a disqualifying condition pre ACA. If this number is correct we can assume ,at minimum, the same number also constitutes the ACA population. The problem with this population is they come to health care as costly patients. Contrast those folks with the rest of us that maintained insurance for many years and then developed “pre existing conditions.” Obviously its more cost effective for insurers to treat those that paid in for many years.
http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/pre-existing-conditions-and-medical-underwriting-in-the-individual-insurance-market-prior-to-the-aca/
And there is your problem. 27% of people who really need insurance won’t have insurance to keep the price low for everyone else and let insurance companies keep their massive profits.
How do these sick people get care? Who pays for it?
This does not remotely begin to back up your assertion that “some folks do wait until they are sick to get coverage”.
You make a pretzel twist leap to correlate pre existing conditions to waiting till sick to get coverage. And those two things are not remotely the same.
I am referring to “sick” and “pre existing” because they are closely related and expensive to treat. Diabetes, for instance, could be considered a sickness, illness and a pre existing condition. You don’t wait until you are sick or ill nor should you wait until you develop a pre existing condition before you get insurance.
The ideal here is for individuals to have insurance prior to sickness and prior to developing pre existing conditions. To encourage folks to get insured early the repub plan allows insurers to charge 30% more for the first year to those that wait. Of course it’s not gonna work for all without insurance but it may encourage some to get insured.
The ACA mandate was ineffective because there were too many built-in exceptions and because some folks don’t pay income tax or don’t get a refund on their income tax.
As for “maintain continuous coverage” I don’t know what length of time without insurance will be allowable before the penalty kicks in.
This new plan justs shifts the deck chairs. There is still a mandate. The only difference is now the money goes into the insurance companies coffers as opposed to the federal government.
The 30% does two things:
1. It encourages folks to maintain insurance which hopefully keeps rates lower for all policy holders.
2. A 30% increase may help defray some of the cost of covering those that wait until after pre existing conditions, illness, sickness, disease… which may keep rates lower for all policy holders.
so it is NO different from the current mandate except for who benefits monetarily…
The penalty is taken from your tax refund. The penalty, which is 695$ or 2.5% of income, is not much of a penalty anyway. Also you did not address the exceptions to the mandate.
http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-mandate-exemption-penalty/
Thats all well and good. Except for the number of people born with “pre-existing conditions” or a genetic pre-disposition to said conditions.
Also, while I do not disagree with you on the fact that people should not wait to obtain insurance, I am moreso asking you to back up the claim that you made that “One of the problems with ACA was that some folks do wait until they are sick to get coverage. ” It is a claim without evidence or data to back it up. It grinds my gears. There are many faults with the ACA. No need to resort to falsehoods or baseless claims.
“One of the problems with ACA was that some folks do wait until they are sick to get coverage. ”
That may be, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to gaming the system, and lapses in coverage are often the result of lapses in employment, which can remove both the coverage and the income to purchase coverage. Individual health insurance plans are insanely expensive without subsidies, so it’s perfectly rational for healthy people to not want to pay the equivalent of their mortgage for insurance unless they think they’ll need it. It makes sense to charge a tax to those who don’t maintain coverage in order to 1) incentivize buying a policy (they’re paying anyway) and 2) pay for their eventual emergency room visit. To me, allowing the premiums to go even higher if you have a lapse in coverage just makes it farther out of reach for those who want a policy that they can’t afford.
It seems to me that jumping to the conclusion that people who don’t do what we think they should have these negative motives is not helpful and obscures the actual problem. This shit costs too damn much.
He also said that he’d rather get as much done as possible without the Democrats involved. Way to put country before party.
That pretty well sums up our two party system. That ‘other’ party always gets in the way. Neither party can allow the ‘other’ to have any ideas on issues. The ‘other’ party must be defeated on every issue.
The thing about it is it doesnt penalize those who only seek coverage when they get sick. If you really need insurance 30% (if you can pay it) wont stop you. Its way cheaper than not having anything. If you are healthy, you will probably take a pass because you can pay the 30% later. So this fixes nothing, but its sounds good to shame the sick and the poor.
Good point.
Estimated loss of insurance per district. This is the number of people who would lose coverage per district. The original for all districts can be found here with methodology.
These are some significant numbers.
http://acasignups.net/17/03/06/updated-how-many-could-lose-coverage-your-congressional-district
GA-01 23,189
GA-02 16,254
GA-03 20,877
GA-04 33,103
GA-05 29,404
GA-06 29,329
GA-07 38,720
GA-08 15,098
GA-09 21,889
GA-10 21,094
GA-11 27,740
GA-12 20,299
GA-13 29,979
GA-14 18,421
I think it’s important to make sure everyone knows that the American Health Care Act is a part of the process of the repeal and replace of Obamacare. It was never intended to stand on it’s own as the replacement. The AHCA is all that can be done with reconciliation and is the first step in a three step process. This bill address the tax credits and the other points that can be put into reconciliation bill. The next phase is to have Secretary Price take his pen and through the administrative process free up as much as legally can be done. Many of the burdensome regulations and mandates can be done away with just by Dr. Price’s signature. The third and final phase of repeal and replace will be to have vote on the items that can not be addressed through the reconciliation process. This will have to get 60 votes in the Senate. But there are senators in blue states that Trump won that are up for reelection and they will then be put into the situation of voting to keep some of the worst parts of Obamacare.
if this is in fact true, Ryan and his surrogates SERIOUSLY botched this roll out. Because that message was not received by and large by the average American. They gotta work on their PR game with this.
The message was not received by the majority of the House and Senate either. Example Sen. Tom Cotton…
No, that is not true. Cotton and others heard what they wanted to hear and that was that there would not be one single large repeal and replace bill.
Not going to say that the roll out of this was great. It hasn’t been, but the sell has been going on eternally on the Hill and not necessarily in the media. Not saying that is the best approach. Just saying what is happening.
“Also there was Z-E-R-O talk of a three step plan until the GOP caucus called this bill out for the sham it is.” Just because you weren’t in those meetings and didn’t hear it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Those discussions were had.
Maybe I was in a few.
See a portion of the roll call article below. As you can see these discussions were going on at the end of January.
Senate HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander outlined a three-step process that would not roll back all of the 2010 law on the front end, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Republican told Roll Call.
“Sen. Alexander talked with members about his three-part plan to repair the damage of Obamacare and how Congress and the Trump administration can work together to give Americans access to truly affordable health care,” the spokeswoman said.
“The first step — which will be discussed in more detail at next Wednesday’s Senate health committee hearing — is to send in a rescue crew to help the 11 million Americans who buy individual insurance and are currently trapped in the collapsing Obamacare exchanges health care market,” the spokeswoman said. “The second is step by step to build better health care systems by moving more decisions out of Washington, D.C, to states and patients. Finally, as reforms become concrete and practical alternatives, Congress can repeal the remaining parts of Obamacare in order to repair the damage it has caused Americans.”
– See more at: http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/gop-leaves-retreat-prushing-small-bills-rebuild-obamacare#sthash.IvpESTQg.dpuf
That statement was more than a month ago to a reporter. Of course they didn’t give the entire game plan out then. These guys have been talking on the three step game plan for months. You are wrong. It may not have been finalized on January 27th but those discussions were being had. Anyone who says they weren’t are liars or misinformed.
Your statement about Ryan not knowing policy is pretty outrageous. He is one of a very few who actually does know policy and what he’s doing. But I don’t have time for this today. Until next time.
What Cotton heard was the voice of constituents at his town hall. He softened his tone quite a bit after they handed his head to him.
Its kinda moot because part 3 isnt going to happen, and they know it isnt going to happen because not 1 democrat will sign on to it…so 350,000 Georgians + will lose access to affordable healthcare (which is even more frightening seeing we didnt expand medicaid)
Late to the game responding to this and I’m sure it will get read by, say 1 or 2 people at most, but here goes…
Senate Republicans couldn’t be anymore clear – this bill is DOA. It’s not going anywhere. House Republicans would be wise to stop jamming a square peg into a round hole and start over.
Here’s the fundamental problem, in my opinion. House Republicans are too focused on trying to fix the problems of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) as opposed to starting over from scratch and working on “fixing” the healthcare coverage issue and affordability of healthcare in the United States in total. Start over – from the beginning and build a bill thoughtfully that addresses some of the fundamental issues – not just issues with what Democrats passed originally.
Form a Blue Ribbon Commission and have it put to a vote up or down and let’s make real bipartisan and sustainable progress on this important issue. Bring in real doctors, doctor associations, nurses, nurses associations, patients, patient associations, advocacy groups, insurers, etc and let’s get to some fundamental truths about our system and make it work! It can be done, Members of Congress and the Senate just have to have the intestinal fortitude to see it through and stop playing gimmick games for cheap temporary wins.
Is that you Bull Moose? More like Bull Unicorn. Riding in on a rainbow. Singing Kumbaya.
I am curious to see how much hardball the GOP leadership plays. They really could twist some arms and force some support. I’m already getting the sense that Trump doesn’t mind acting like a gangster and this wouldn’t be much different. But at this point do they really want it to pass? Maybe they need an excuse to let it fail.
It’s your favorite Moose for sure… I finally started drinking decaff!
But that would take a bill requiring a 60 vote passage from the senate. If you just deal with the tax related issues (the part 1 items) you only need 50 votes plus the VP to ‘repeal’.
All the other stuff will be in parts 2 & 3. Or so they tell us. No one has a clue what is exactly in parts 2 & 3, but I hear it will be Fantastic.
I only had to fingers to type on the phone at the time to get more detailed…