It is difficult to imagine that the passage of the American Health Care Act could so quickly be shunted to the back burner. But firing the head of the FBI can have that effect.
Still, maybe we shouldn’t be so easily distracted.
One aspect of the Affordable Care Act, which the AHCA is designed to replace, was the expansion of Medicaid. All told, 70,000 Rhode Islanders were added to the state’s Medicaid rolls, with 95 percent of them having their care paid for by the federal government.
Nearly 30 percent of Rhode Islanders, about 290,000 people, get their health care through Medicaid now, and estimates are that more than 100,000 of them would lose this coverage if the AHCA were to become law.
In addition to the human suffering the loss of this insurance would create, the dramatic increase in uncompensated care at the state’s hospitals would add lots of red ink to their already sickly bottom lines.
Whatever does come out of efforts to reform health care reform, the full effects of the changes must be measured. To do anything else would be irresponsible.