If you thought the Trumpcare bill in Congress was bad, well, Republicans are now trying to make Trumpcare, which is the proposed legal vehicle for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that provided millions of Americans with health insurance, a lot worse in order to appease members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of far-right Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Republicans have, since Monday, made two major amendments to the original Trumpcare bill.
The first is the so-called “manager’s amendment”. What the manager’s amendment, if enacted, would end the popular and effective Medicaid expansion a lot sooner than the original bill would have, allows states to raid federal Medicaid funds and use them for purposes other than Medicaid, and makes the Medicaid funding cuts from the original bill a lot more severe, giving state governments, particularly those controlled by Republicans, an opportunity to deprive large numbers of people of health insurance. ThinkProgress, a left-leaning website, gave a more detailed description of the manager’s amendment here.
The second is the Meadows Amendment, named after U.S. Representative and House Freedom Caucus member Mark Meadows (R-NC). Among other things, the Meadows Amendment would allow private-sector health insurers to:
- deny health insurance to those with pre-existing medical conditions
- force women to pay more money for the same exact health insurance that men receive
- enact annual and/or lifetime limits on health care coverage
- force people to pay money out-of-pocket for vital preventative care, such as mammograms and vaccinations
It’s not hard to understand why most Americans don’t like Trumpcare.
The Progressive Midwesterner 