House Republicans finally unveiled their Double Secret Obamacare "replacement" bill last night and it may be even worse than what you expected.
The bill does many terrible things, but chiefly among them is cutting Medicaid to finance several different tax cuts for the rich.
Their long-awaited proposal, unveiled Monday evening, would among other things kill a 3.8 percent investment tax on the well-to-do that Democrats had used to help finance the health care law, as well as a 0.9 percent surcharge on wages above $250,000. [...]
The move would save the top 0.1 percent of earners about $195,000 annually, according to the Tax Policy Center.
It also includes a tax break for healthcare CEOs.
WASHINGTON — The Republican plan to replace Obamacare includes a tax break for insurance company executives making over $500,000 per year.
Companies can generally deduct employee salaries as a business expense but in 2013 the Affordable Care Act capped the deductions on health insurance executive salaries at $500,000.
Under the GOP plan, Medicaid expansion will end. Healthcare plans will no longer be required to provide a minimum amount of benefits. Lifetime caps on spending will return. Subsidies will be replaced by significantly less generous tax credits based on age rather than income. Companies with more than 50 employees will no longer be required to provide healthcare. The plan also prohibits women from buying health insurance plans that cover abortion and defunds Planned Parenthood.
Under the GOP plan, insurance companies will be allowed to charge older people up to 5 times more than younger people, an amount that was capped at 3 times more under Obamacare.
The GOP plan will also eliminate the requirement that insurance covers mental health and substance abuse which, as you know, has become something of an epidemic in the white Midwest and rust belt.
To say that this is a recipe for massive amounts of death, bankruptcy and depression feels like an understatement. But, if I'm being frank, I'm pulled in different directions on this. I'm concerned about what this could mean for people who did not vote for this, but for everyone else I may have reached my limit for caring.
White voters and "real Americans" in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin voted for this. They voted to pollute their own streams. They voted to pollute their own air. They voted to eliminate coverage for substance abuse. They voted to kill themselves. White people, many of whom probably thought they were stickin' it to Obama and black voters and the Clintons, or whoever, really stuck it to themselves.
It's ironic that a portion of the country that's increasingly concerned about the rise of minorities have voted to debase and kill themselves in every way possible. White middle America is both metaphorically and literally going to die.
With all of that said, this bill will face major hurdles.
The conservative Freedomworks, Club for Growth, Heritage Foundation, and even the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity group have all issued statements condemning the bill because it doesn't go far enough. Conservative representatives in the Freedom Caucus who believe it doesn't go far enough have also been joined by Senator Rand Paul, while several other Republican senators believe the bill goes too far.
Speaker Paul Ryan plans to begin actually moving this bill through committees within the next two days which is just as reckless and insane as you think it is. Ryan wants to move the bill quickly before everyone under the sun realizes how fucking terrible it is.