Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Parsing The Policies: Is This Just Another 'Lousy' Bill Or Does It Advance A 'Great Idea'?
Los Angeles Times: Graham-Cassidy: Another Day, Another Lousy GOP Healthcare Bill
The latest proposal — by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — suffers from the same fundamental problems as all of its predecessors. Aiming to lower insurance costs for the healthy, it would allow states to herd people with preexisting conditions or potentially expensive risks — say, women who might want maternity coverage — into insurance gulags with egregiously high premiums. (9/21)
USA Today: Last-Ditch Obamacare Repeal Would Be Poison
Given up as a lost cause this summer, the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare is back, this time in the form of a last-ditch effort led by GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy, Dean Heller and Ron Johnson. Like previous efforts, this measure would strip tens of millions of people of their health coverage. It would gut Medicaid, the program responsible for funding nearly half of baby deliveries and most of nursing home care. It would allow insurers in some states to deny coverage based on a previous medical condition. And it would allow insurers to skip coverage of essential services, including maternity care. (9/20)
USA Today: Let States Tailor Health Care Plans
Under Obamacare, insurance premiums in the individual market have more than doubled nationally, and without billions of additional taxpayer dollars, many of those markets are at risk of collapse. Obamacare was never designed to be patient-friendly. In fact, one of the key tenets of Obamacare is taking power away from patients and local officials. Obamacare gives this decision-making power to the federal government, allowing bureaucrats to call the shots. (Sen. Ron Johnson, 9/20)
The New York Times: Graham-Cassidy Has One Great Idea
In the timid sense, the proposal would keep much more of Obamacare’s taxes and spending in place than previous Republican plans this year. Yet Graham-Cassidy makes more sweeping changes by turning money currently used on insurance subsidies and the Medicaid expansion into block grants to states. This change would give states more flexibility to design their own health care systems. (Philip Klein, 9/20)
The Washington Post: Cassidy-Graham Is Attractive In Theory. But It Has A Giant Flaw.
A group of Republican senators, led by Bill Cassidy (La.) and Lindsay O. Graham (S.C.), have revived GOP efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. Their bill has a number of attractive attributes: It would repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, for example, and make important reforms to Medicaid. But Cassidy-Graham also has an important, albeit fixable, flaw — what we might call “asymmetric federalism.” (Avik Roy, 9/20)
Los Angeles Times: The Disastrous Impact Of The GOP's Obamacare Repeal Plan, In Three Devastating Charts
The healthcare consulting firm Avalere on Wednesday released the latest in a series of independent analyses of Senate Republicans’ new effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The findings are beyond ugly. They show devastating cuts in healthcare funding for adults, children and the disabled — in effect, almost every population category in the U.S. other than seniors enrolled in Medicare. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/20)
