What Would GOP Health Care Overhaul Mean for Michigan?
“It would shift a lot of cost to the state. And it would cause a lot of people to lose coverage in the Medicaid market.”
If Donald Trump and other Republican leaders in Washington get their way, we could soon be living in a post-Obamacare world.
The federal health care law is undoubtedly controversial on both sides of the aisle. But it has also extended coverage to millions of Americans in recent years. It has also added strong protections for patients, such as ones with so-called “pre-existing conditions.”
What happens to patients who benefit from Obamacare in Michigan if those provisions of the law are rolled back?
And what did the health care landscape look like in Michigan before the law was adopted? Would we go back to those days and those old health care debates? Or would we have to start over from scratch?
“What the (GOP proposal) is supposed to do is deal with the problem that premiums — even though they haven’t been increasing as fast as they did prior to Obamacare — they are still increasing and a lot of people are finding that, with copays and whatnot, that’s unaffordable,” says Rick Pluta, state Capitol bureau chief for the Michigan Public Radio Network.
Marianne Udow-Phillips, director of the Ann Arbor-based Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation, tells Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson that she’s concerned about the possible effects of the plan here in Michigan. About 600,000 people have signed up for coverage under Michigan’s Medicaid expansion, which would likely be eliminated under the legislation.
“It would be a really serious problem for the state,” says Udow-Phillips. “It would shift a lot of cost to the state. And it would cause a lot of people to lose coverage in the Medicaid market.”
Click on the audio player above to hear the full conversation.
