GOP Sen. Steve Daines frustrated by Republicans’ secrecy on Senate health care bill
Montana Sen.
Daines told
“I have been frustrated with the lack of transparency and the lack of visibility that we are having in this process,” Daines said. “I want to see a bill. Put down all these thoughts now in a bill so we can look at it. Then we can really have the best dialogue and conversation once you actually see it in a proposed law. It needs to be posted soon. I hope we get to see it next week.”
Daines said for the bill to work for Montanans, it's going to have to make health care more affordable. Health care expenditures are on track to become 20 percent of the
Daines and other
The ACA became commonly known as Obamacare, a term coined by Republican lawmakers who opposed the policy and vowed to repeal it, which they are now attempting to do.
Medicaid eligibility, expanded to include the working poor under the Affordable Care Act, needs to continue, Daines said, though the portion of the bill paid by the federal government will need to decrease.
“I want to make sure that we would not pull the rug out from Montana from a federal perspective and make sure that we keep our obligation to the states that have decided to expand Medicaid,” Daines said. “Whether you agree with Medicaid expansion or not, the bottom line is this: the state has decided to go forward on that, and I believe it’s the federal government’s responsibility to at least protect Montana through 2019 when Montana’s Medicaid expansion program sunsets.”
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Roughly 79,000 working Montanans with incomes within 138 percent of the federal poverty level - about
Daines said
The level of federal support for the program will decrease over a few years until by 2024 the federal government is paying 68 percent of the costs and states pick up the rest.
Much of the discussion surrounding the future of Medicaid expansion under Republican plans to replace the Affordable Care Act has assumed that expansion would stop in 2019 and that people who have taken advantage of Medicaid expansion would be pushed off the rolls. Daines said that’s not what the
“There are those in the state who I think are putting out information that’s not entirely accurate, creating a lot of concern and fears that frankly do not align with where it looks like this bill text is headed at the moment,” Daines said.
Last week, the
That forecast is based on the House AHCA bill and does not reflect what the
“From our standpoint, Medicaid expansion has done a very good job of doing what it needs to do,” Wernham said. “Since Medicaid expansion, our uninsured rate has dropped a lot, to 7.4 percent, which is compared to 11 percent nationally in 2016.”
Before Medicaid expansion the number of uninsured people in
What Medicaid expansion has meant to Montana health care is to make sure that medical bills get paid and that more Montanans are practicing preventative care rather than turning up in emergency rooms with complications from untreated medical problems.
Medicaid coverage has been critical at
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The non-Medicaid priorities for the
There’s no tax on the accounts as they grow. There are no taxes when the money is spent, provided the funds are spent on approved medical needs. Lawmakers in the
“Health savings accounts have been shown to be a way to help drive, frankly, market pressures on the system where it gives consumers choice,” Daines said. Consumers spending money from HSAs while making medical decisions will seek the most affordable services.
Critics caution that HSAs are only useful if people can afford to invest. And HSAs work with lower- to average-cost medical expenses. Some expenses are too big for HSAs to cover. The funds are currently used by people with high-deductible insurance policies in which individuals must pay a higher amount of upfront medical costs before their insurance kicks in.
Another idea
People with preexisting conditions would then be put in a high-risk insurance pool, where the level of government support is higher to meet the medical costs of people with chronic health problems. Guaranteeing that health coverage is available for people with preexisting conditions is the goal.
Montana’s senior senator, Democrat
Many of the problems facing the ACA could have been fixed over the years since
President
Tester supports continuing Medicaid expansion, improving cost-sharing terms for copays and deductibles, while also covering essential benefits for mental health, prescription drugs and preventative care.
Tester wants to continue allowing adult children to stay on parents’ health plans until age 26, a feature
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