— What happens then?
WASHINGTON — The Republican’s repeal and replace bill, American Health Care Act, cleared two congressional committees and the Congressional Budget Office released its scoring report, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc) says passing the GOP plan is a make or break issue Congress.
So it is time to ask the pundits: what will happen if this bill becomes law?
MedPage Today asked policy experts on both sides of the great healthcare divide to answer that question and this is what they told us.
From the Pro Repeal and Replace Camp:
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, PhD, president of the American Action Forum touted the bill because it allows people to make their own choice. He predicts that eliminating the individual mandate will mean 5 million fewer uninsured in 2018.
“The bill basically says we respect your decision to not purchase insurance. There’s a public policy decision about how much we respect people’s decisions and clearly we know where the bill comes down on that,” he said. […]
And Now the Loyal Opposition:
Under the Affordable Care Act, the reason everyone pays for all of the various benefits was because doing so lowered costs, explained, Diana Zuckerman, PhD of the National Center for Health Research.
In the same way that car insurance lowers the cost of having an accident when everyone buys it, under this philosophy healthcare also protects everyone who buys it, Zuckerman said.
“Under [the AHCA] it’s a different view. It’s not that view of ‘We’re all in this together,’ and if we all share the cost, we’ll all get good insurance. Instead the view of this plan is every person for themselves. Everybody should get what seems best for them, even though that could result in 24 million not getting any insurance.” […]
Read the full article here.