Washington, D.C. — The House majority’s mantra and rallying cry for the future of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, has been “repeal and replace.” Up until last week’s release of a replacement outline, the details of any replacement plan had been little more than talking points. Unfortunately, the GOP’s pipe-dream replacement plan suffers from some serious problems with basic arithmetic, relying on massive cuts to Medicaid, broad tax increases on the middle class, and significantly reduced tax credits for health insurance to give the illusion that it is a credible replacement for the ACA.
The Center for American Progress has released a column looking at how the health care outline put forward by the House majority fails to live up to the health care needs of Americans. The CAP analysis relies exclusively on numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The repeal bill would cut Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars, cut tax credits by more than 40 percent, and increase taxes on tens of millions of middle-class workers while giving $346 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
“You can’t slash Medicaid funding by more than half a trillion dollars, halve the tax credit Americans need to purchase quality health insurance, and increase taxes on tens of millions of workers and still call it a credible plan to replace the ACA,” said Topher Spiro, CAP Vice President for Health Policy and co-author of the column. “The math simply does not add up. Not only is this proposal toxic for the health insurance market and the millions of Americans who rely on the ACA, but it is also going to prove toxic for any lawmaker who votes to defund the health of their own voters.”
Click here to read the column.
For more information on this topic or to speak with an expert, contact Tom Caiazza at [email protected] or 202.481.7141.