On Wednesday, when the Congressional Budget Office released their newest estimate of the effects of the latest version of Trumpcare to pass the House, many were devastated at the perceived consequences of the rushed-through bill.
But while many were panicking at the thought of 23 million Americans losing their health insurance coverage in the next few years, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said that the numbers in the CBO “comforted” him.
According to several reporters on the Hill, Ryan responded to the ominous CBO report by saying that he was comforted by the numbers coming from the official report.
Paul Ryan is comforted by the idea of 23 million people losing insurance coverage to finance a tax cut for millionaires https://t.co/uupiaSmjEd
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 25, 2017
This comfort comes despite the fact that premiums are expected to rise substantially, millions are estimated to lose their coverage, and insurance companies are expected to provide drastically fewer services to those who do have coverage.
From the CBO:
“CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 14 million more people would be uninsured under H.R. 1628 than under current law. The increase in the number of uninsured people relative to the number projected under current law would reach 19 million in 2020 and 23 million in 2026. In 2026, an estimated 51 million people under age 65 would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law. Under the legislation, a few million of those people would use tax credits to purchase policies that would not cover major medical risks.”
Of course, the previous version of Trumpcare would have kicked even more Americans off of healthcare coverage – about 25 million. Now that we’ve carved that number down by about two million, Ryan can apparently rest easy.
The meme of Ryan being so emotionally bankrupt that he cheers the death and illness of our nation’s poorest seems to be becoming more true by the day.
So remember this next time Paul Ryan is up for re-election: every death that is caused by the end of Obamacare, every sick person who is kicked off of coverage thanks to this new healthcare bill, each suffering American that would have been healed through better healthcare rather than less of it brings nothing but comfort to our Speaker.
This is what leadership in the GOP wants for us.
