Congressional Republicans claim to have achieved a real miracle. They believe that one of their big beauty bills would cut nearly $800 billion from Medicaid spending over 10 years without causing any Americans to lose health care, or at least, at least not making anybody who loses health care worse.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by imposing Medicaid job requirements, the bill will ultimately increase the uninsured population by at least 8.6 million. At first, Republican officials tried to defend the outcome with people who would only affect lazy people who refused to work. However, this is obviously incorrect. As a large amount of research literature shows, jobs require savings by performing heavy paperwork obligations that are primarily to receive Medicaid from qualified beneficiaries, rather than 25-year-olds who love to play video games to find jobs.
Perhaps for this reason, some Republicans in Washington are now making bolder claims. On the weekend, on CNN, the director of administration and budget Russell was involved in “no one loses coverage due to this bill.” Similarly, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst from Iowa recently told voters at City Hall: “Everyone said Medicaid is being cut and people will see their benefits cuts; that’s not true.” One attendee shouted “People will die,” Ernst replied, “We’ll all die,” and later doubled in her comments on social media, trying to equate fears that Medicaid cuts could hurt people’s belief in the Teeth Fairy.
Officials such as Vought and Ernst have not provided detailed explanations of their assurances. However, there is a center of conservative thinking that tries to defend these claims: Wall Street Journal Edit the page. Last week, it published an editorial titled “Medicaid Panic Movement.” The argument is that Medicaid cuts will “improve health care by expanding private insurance options, which provides better access and health outcomes than Medicaid.”
As they said, if it is true, it would be huge: Republicans have found a way to give low-income Americans Better Healthcare, while saving hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. Given that this wonderful solution is at the moment when Congressional Republicans are desperate to save budgets to partially offset the costs of return and fiscally irresponsible tax cuts.
Sadly, read carefully Wall Street JournalThe editorial shows that there is no such miracle. Instead, the argument relies on a series of misunderstandings and non-sequelists to mask the obvious fact that cutting Medicaid makes the poor more sick and more likely to die.
The editorial first confirms the conclusion of a recent study that the mortality rate among low-income U.S. adults under the Affordable Care Act has decreased by 2.5%. This means taking Medicaid from people can lead to many deaths. The editor insists: “When including adults with disabilities, the difference in mortality between expansion and non-expansion status among low-income adults is 2.5%.
This means that if you include adults with disabilities, the lifesaving effect of Medicaid expansion disappears. In fact, Bruce Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study, told me that the reason the study excludes adults with disabilities is that they are already eligible for public health insurance before expansion. The way to measure the effect of change is to focus on the populations seen as change. So either Wall Street Journal The editorial board intends to mislead its audience, or it does not understand the statistics. (Decades Magazine The editorial provides a good reason for both interpretations. )
At the time, editorials showed that Obamacare has not overcome other social factors that have caused people to die: "It is clear that the expansion of Obamacare has not reduced the deaths of low-income, sound adults. Life expectancy in the United States remains the same as in 2014, which is roughly the same as deaths in adults with overdose, which is largely the same."
As with the previous article, this passage sounds like the saying that giving people access to medical care does not reduce their chances of premature death. But that's not what it means. The editorial simply points out the effects of drug epidemics and other factors with Medicaid expansion. It is speculated that life expectancy will get worse if the government starts to turn people out while the drug epidemic is in a time when it is a massive drug epidemic.
The article goes on to explain that Medicaid pays doctors and hospitals at a lower tax rate than private insurance. This is absolutely true: Medicaid is the cheapest way to get people to access health care in the United States. The editorial lamented that Medicaid recipients’ results were worse than private insurers. But the Republican plan is not to put Medicaid recipients on private insurance, which costs money. The plan is even very cheap insurance without any. (Well, not nothing: The editor notes that the bill will limit the contribution of a healthy savings account to $17,100, from $8,550 for households with a revenue of up to $150,000.
Finally, the editorial asserts: “The Republican bill is unlikely to cause many Americans to lose coverage for Medicaid.” Here, I will analyze the editorial’s support for this extraordinary claim, but nothing. The sentence itself simply floats on its own in text that has nothing to do with the text.
Indeed, the editorial did not even try to explain why the official Congressional Budget Office is estimated to be a big mistake. It also doesn’t match a lot of evidence that people who receive Medicaid coverage will naturally get better. The near-cosmic belief that being able to see a doctor and purchase medications will make you healthier is an assumption that will require extraordinary evidence to refute. this Wall Street Journal The editorial was not provided at all.
Advocates of the House bill have developed a halo of respect for anyone who states its obvious meaning. But even the most detailed attempts to confirm its position are entirely composed of deflection and semi-truth. If this is the best case for fear of Republican Medicaid, Americans should indeed be worried.