For the expressed purpose of adding insult to injury.
WASHINGTON – The House-approved Republican budget could leave as many as 44 million more Americans without health insurance over ten years, according to a new nonpartisan report.
The debate surrounding the blueprint has focused on the plan to replace Medicare with a system of subsidies to buy private insurance. But that wouldn't happen for 10 years, and in that time, the proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act and turn Medicaid into a program of block grants for states could significantly grow the ranks of the uninsured.
A Kaiser Family Foundation study, conducted with the Urban Institute, concluded that those two elements of the plan would leave between 31 and 44 Americans uninsured, depending on various state scenarios that consider eligibility laws and efficiency gains, if the GOP blueprint becomes law. "Most of the people who would lose Medicaid coverage would become uninsured," the study says.
Republicans have since backed away from the plan to convert Medicare into a glorified coupon program, but they aren't backing away from the campaign to "kill the job-killing government takeover of healthcare," also known as the non-job-killing, non-government takeover of healthcare, Affordable Care Act. And they aren't backing away from the campaign to balance the budget on the backs of poor people by taking away their healthcare.
Meanwhile, "Romneycare" left the state of Massachusetts with the highest rate of insured persons in the nation, and Mitt Romney isn't even allowed to campaign on this legitimate policy success story. To do so would be an admission that the Affordable Care Act, which is nearly identical to "Romneycare," is actually a good plan.
Only in the Republican party is it a bad thing to ensure everyone has healthcare.