Talking Points: The American Health Care Act

The American Health Care Act would strip affordable coverage from working people, leaving millions uninsured and millions more facing drastically higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs. It would return us to a time when only the wealthy were able to afford comprehensive coverage.

This bill would effectively end health coverage for 11 million people by terminating the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and radically restructure the rest of the Medicaid program in ways that will pass health care costs and risk on to states.

• It would end the current guarantee of federal support based on actual state spending and restrict federal funding.
  • Under this bill, every state would have its federal funding adjusted based on the same inadequate, one-size-fits-all inflation formula.
  • This formula ignores the unique needs of state Medicaid programs, which have varying spending patterns based on state-specific demographics, medical technology use, public health crises, and more.

This bill would gut financial assistance for premiums as well as cost-sharing for lower- and moderate-income families and further increase premiums for older adults by thousands of dollars.

• Millions of people will see their premiums and deductibles increase by hundreds to thousands of dollars.
• People with serious chronic illnesses will be hurt the most, left only with bare-bones coverage that comes with drastically higher deductibles. These individuals will once again be forced to go without lifesaving treatment or go into debt to get the care they need.

This bill provides billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthy and billion-dollar corporations. These tax cuts for the rich are paid for by taking health care away from lower-income working families and putting at risk the health care of millions of children, seniors, and people with disabilities.

• It’s clear given the harmful policies in this bill that millions of people will lose coverage. It’s wildly reckless for the Republicans to move forward without independent analysis of the full damage these policies will inflict on families and on the federal budget.