Will Healthcare Overhaul Pass and What Would It Mean For Michiganders?
The bill “has kind of landed with a thud,” says POLITICO healthcare reporter Jen Haberkorn.
After months of wondering whether Republicans could come up with something to replace Obamacare, we have our answer.
GOP lawmakers have released a plan that isn’t so much a repeal of the federal healthcare law, but one that keeps it’s most popular parts and dismantles the parts that aren’t so widely popular.
But in doing so, critics say the proposal amounts to a big tax cut for the rich, which likely means shifting costs onto the poor elderly.
POLITICO healthcare reporter Jennifer Haberkorn joins Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson from Washington D.C. to tell us what’s happening on Capitol Hill and the likelihood we’ll see this thing pass.
“It has kind of landed with a thud,” says Haberkorn. “A lot of conservative Republicans say that this is just Obamacare-light and they’re not going to support it. A couple of moderate Republicans say that it doesn’t do enough to protect the most low-income people, particularly people on Medicaid. And a lot of the advocacy organizations involved in healthcare, such as all the major hospital associations, all the major physician organizations say that they won’t not support this either.”
“As of right now, Republicans are kind of swimming upstream with this bill.”
Henderson is also joined by Marianne Udow-Phillips, director of the Ann Arbor-based Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation. She says most of the people who need coverage most would likely see higher insurance costs.
“People who are older, people who are not healthy, people who are low-income would face many more challenges in affording healthcare coverage under this bill.”
Click on the audio player above to hear the full conversation.
