A new paper out of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania finds that Medicaid and other health care cuts in the House reconciliation bill would lead to 51,000 preventable deaths each year. The Senate is currently considering the bill. And, it’s anyone’s guess what its final provisions will be.
If the House bill were enacted into law, the consequences would be devastating. Millions would lose their health insurance. Millions more would likely struggle to get hospital and nursing home care. Many nursing homes and hospitals would not survive.
Here’s a breakdown of the researchers’ projections:
- 7.7 million people would lose insurance coverage through Medicaid and the state health insurance exchanges: As a result, 11,300 deaths each year.
- 1.38 million people with Medicare with very low incomes would lose extra coverage, including help with prescription drug costs, through Medicaid: As a result, 18,200 would die each year because they could no longer afford their medications.
- Nursing home minimum staffing rules would end: 13,000 deaths of nursing home residents each year.
- 5 million people would lose insurance coverage through health insurance exchanges as a result of an end to tax credits that help people pay health insurance premiums: 8,811 deaths each year.
Alison Galvani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at Yale School of Public Health and one of the paper’s authors, explains to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that guaranteeing health care to all would cost less than we spend on health care today and save 68,000 lives every year. We can reduce health care spending and create a better health care system, but we can’t do so by increasing the number of people without health insurance.
Unfortunately, logic and reason have never swayed most members of Congress. Money and power drive too much decision-making.
Here’s more from Just Care:
- The deadly consequences of out-of-pocket drug costs
- Government is not warning people about Medicare Advantage plans that could endanger their lives
- Proposed Medicaid cuts would mean benefit cuts for 1.4 million people with Medicare
- Proposed Medicaid cuts would mean benefit cuts for 1.4 million people with Medicare
- Congress could end overpayments to big insurers in Medicare Advantage and save $1 trillion, without gutting Medicaid
