Murphy: Latest Senate Health Care Bill Is Worst Yet For Connecticut

Sept. 22--The latest Republican effort in Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act would deal the worst blow yet to Connecticut, reducing the state's insured population by 300,000 and slashing federal funding by $15 billion from 2020-2027, Sen. Chris Murphy warned Thursday.

The latest effort comes with many health care activists believing they had won the fight to preserve Obamacare, Murphy said during a visit to the Community Health Center of New Britain.

"Because this happened so fast, because most of the country was lulled into a sense of complacency because of the failure of the bill in July ... there's a lot of catch-up happening," Murphy said.

The numbers Murphy provided come from an independent health care consultant's analysis; the Congressional Budget Office has not yet had time to score the latest bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has told senators to expect a vote next week.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., are making one last push to eliminate President Barack Obama's signature health care legislation due, in part, to a Sept. 30 deadline they face to pass an Obamacare repeal bill with 50 votes through the reconciliation process.

The Graham-Cassidy bill disproportionately affects states like Connecticut that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. States that did not expand Medicaid, like Alabama and Mississippi, would see their federal funding increase.

Most of the cuts Connecticut would experience in Graham-Cassidy come from the elimination of the Medicaid expansion and the transition of the program to a block grant formula, effectively capping the amount any one state can receive.

Cuts to Medicaid are a big concern for Mark Masselli, CEO of Community Health Center, Inc., which runs the New Britain location and 13 others. About two-thirds of their patients rely on Medicaid insurance to pay for treatment.

But a more immediate concern is the reauthorization of about $40 million in federal funding for the community health centers he runs in Connecticut that Congress must approve by the end of the month. The fear is that funding could get held up due to the larger fight over the Affordable Care Act.

"Heath centers across Connecticut will be drastically limited in their ability to continue to provide the care that they do to the hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents who depend on their services daily" if the funding doesn't come, Masselli said.

The Republican legislation includes many pieces of previous Affordable Care Act repeal bills -- blocking Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood and eliminating protections for patients with pre-existing conditions -- but, Murphy noted, it does not contain some of the sweeteners that were added to woo moderate Republicans to prior versions, like a dedicated fund to combat opioid addiction.

"I've been in politics for 20 years and this would be the most irresponsible thing that any group of federal officials has ever done," he said. "It's ill thought out, it's devastating. They're not there yet, they don't have 50 votes yet. But it's close."

Read The Courant's Capitol Watch blog »

------

Subscribe and listen to the Capitol Watch Podcast

iTunes -- Soundcloud -- Google Play -- TuneIn

------

___

(c)2017 The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.)

Visit The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) at www.courant.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.