Protesters decry GOP health care plan
A few weeks shy of her 65th birthday -- when she would have qualified for
"She's now stuck with immense hospital bills," he said.
Lou was one of the speakers at the rally that started at the
In a report released Monday, the nonpartisan
If passed as is, the Republican plan would cause 14 million people to lose coverage in 2018.
Under the Affordable Care Act, 25,173
Almost one in three
The number of uninsured
While attention so far has focused on insurance coverage losses and cost savings from the Republican plan, Lou said the plan cuts a broad array of preventive services, which are cheaper in the long run than paying for catastrophic medical problems.
Spending would be reduced on programs for Alzheimer's disease prevention and education, breastfeeding promotion, diabetes prevention, smoking cessation, immunizations, lead poisoning programs and more, he said.
"We spend far less on preventative care than we do for catastrophic care," Lou said.
Family nurse practitioner
"A lot of people did not come in until it was almost too late," Hoagland said.
She recalled one patient who resisted going to the hospital because she couldn't afford the ambulance bill. She finally got treatment in the hospital's intensive care unit and survived.
Under the Republican plan, insurance premiums would cost less for young adults and more for older adults. Current law allows insurance companies to charge older people three times more than younger people, but the new plan would allow older people to be charged five times more, according to the CBO.
New tax credits would range from
"Under the legislation, premiums for older people could be five times larger than those for younger people in many states, but the size of the tax credits for older people would only be twice the size of credits for younger people," the CBO said.
The plan would eliminate the mandate that people have insurance and would reduce requirements on companies to provide employer-based insurance. About 2 million fewer people would have workplace-based coverage next year, and that number would grow to 7 million in 2026, the CBO says.
The
"There's a lot more work to be done in order to make the health care system affordable, flexible and predictable, but the American Health Care Act is a necessary first step," the business group said.
According to the federation, the high cost of health care has been the top concern of small business owners for the past 30 years.
The
Insurance plans would not have to cover as many services, which could reduce insurance premium costs but increase consumers' out-of-pocket costs, the CBO said.
"No doubt about it, the health care system is broken. My biggest complaint with Obamacare is you penalize people for something they can't afford," Whitfield said, referring to penalties people face for going without insurance.
Whitfield said his wife was recently prescribed a 10-day supply of medication that cost
He noted America is already trillions of dollars in debt.
The national debt has surpassed
The Republican health care plan would do away with federal and state websites that allow people to shop for subsidized insurance. Existing tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies would be eliminated in 2020.
It would also eliminate federal funding for
Federal law already prohibits federal funding of abortion.
-- Reach staff reporter
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