Senator Pat Toomey's Defense Of His ACA Replacement (SPOILER: He's Lying About Medicaid)

Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey has, luckily for us, posted an explanation/defense of his "draft bill" to replace Obamacare.

This gives us a very good opportunity to contrast/compare what he says about the bill with the reality of the bill.  For example, he writes:

Despite inaccurate reports to the contrary, the Senate draft bill keeps Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, the program for low-income Americans. Obamacare created a new category of eligibility: working age, able-bodied, childless adults. Under the Senate bill, both the 700,000 Pennsylvanians who signed up for this expansion and future expansion enrollees will retain their federal eligibility for the program. In fact, the federal government will pay at least 90 percent of their costs through 2020, with states paying the balance. Then, over a four-year phase-in period, states wishing to cover this new category of recipients will be required to pay their fair share — only 48 percent in Pennsylvania — for the Medicaid expansion. This is the same amount states currently pay for every traditional Medicaid category: the aged, disabled, children, and families.

The Senate's bill keeps the expansion and enrollees retain their federal eligibility.  That's what Pat Toomey said.

So what's changed?  Ah, Pat you hinted at it but you left out an uber-important part, dinja?

From AARP:

The Senate bill would restructure the Medicaid program, which provides health care coverage for 74 million poor and low-income adults, children, pregnant women and people with disabilities. Medicaid also pays for long-term care services and supports, including home- and community-based care, and covers two-thirds of the care for people living in nursing homes.

The bill would phase out the additional federal funding 31 states and Washington, D.C., receive to expand their Medicaid populations. This phaseout would leave states with a huge deficit. [Emphasis added.]

The program would still be there.  The eligibility would still be there. But the funding wont be (thanks be to Pat).

AARP has more on that point:

These changes mean less federal money would be available to the states for Medicaid. Starting in 2025, the rate of growth of the per capita cap would decline significantly, meaning even deeper cuts to the program. Given the aging demographics of the country, the cap would not keep pace with the funding necessary to support the needs of the senior and disabled population.

Pat also wrote:

The Senate draft proposal will not affect that vast majority of Pennsylvania families who receive their coverage through an employer, Medicare, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Bu-u-u-u-t, the scaling back of Medicaid funding DOES effect children's health, doesn't it, Pat?

Take a look at this from the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics:

The bill fails children by dismantling the Medicaid program, capping its funding, ending its expansion and allowing its benefits to be scaled back. The bill fails all children by leaving more families uninsured, or without insurance they can afford or that meets their basic needs. This bill fails children living in or near poverty, children in foster care and children with complex health care needs whose parents have private insurance – all of these children depend on Medicaid, and if this bill passes, Medicaid will no longer be there for them.

The bill includes misleading ‘protections’ for children by proposing to exempt them from certain Medicaid cuts. A ‘carve-out’ for children with ‘medically complex’ health issues does little to protect their coverage when the base program providing the coverage is stripped of its funding. Doing so forces states to chip away coverage in other ways, by not covering children living in poverty who do not have complex health conditions, or by scaling back the benefits that children and their families depend on. This bill would make a child’s access to health care dependent on his or her ZIP code and force states to make decisions about which vulnerable population gets services. Put simply, this bill is bad policy for children.

So you seen what he did? He lied by not tell you the whole truth.

And for what? Pat brushes against it a few times but doesn't quite come out and say it. But the AP does:

Senate Republicans’ new health bill cuts taxes by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, mostly for corporations and the richest families in America.

As does CNBC:

The health-care bill the GOP rolled out on Thursday morning will retain the nearly $1 trillion in tax cuts previously proposed, with few minor differences.

This means the Senate health-care bill's tax breaks would go primarily to the wealthy, with 40 percent of savings going to the top 1 percent of earners and 64 percent of savings going to the top 20 percent of earners.

For the sake of shuffling off all that money to the very wealthy, Pat Toomey's cutting funding for the medical care of the very poor.

That's simply reprehensible, Pat.  Cruel, mean and reprehensible.

And now you own it, Pat. This work is yours. Forever. Congratulations.