The American Medical Association, the United States’ largest advocacy group for doctors, said on Monday that an estimated drop in coverage for millions of people under House Republicans’ Obamacare repeal bill is “unacceptable.”
“If this bill were to become law, CBO projects 14 million Americans who have gained coverage in recent years could lose it in 2018. For the AMA, that outcome is unacceptable,” the group said in a statement.
The AMA announced its opposition to House Republicans’ American Health Care Act last week, citing “the expected decline in health insurance coverage and the potential harm it would cause to vulnerable patient populations.”
“We cannot support the AHCA as drafted,” the AMA wrote in a letter last Tuesday. “Critically, we urge you to do all that is possible to ensure that those who are currently covered do not become uninsured.”
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in a report released Monday that 24 million people would lose their insurance over the next 10 years under the repeal bill.
“Today’s estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office underscore the AMA’s concerns about the AHCA as it is written,” the AMA said.
The group called Obamacare “an imperfect law” but “a significant improvement on the status quo at the time.”
“The AMA believes we need continued progress to expand coverage for the uninsured,” the group said. “Unfortunately, the current proposal – as the CBO analysis shows – would result in the most vulnerable population losing their coverage.”
You’ve got to know that things are dire when the AMA starts sounding like a bunch of socialists.
Because these “so-called” doctors know that preventing the poor from health care just forces them to emergency rooms for routing treatments that could be far better accomplished in a doctor’s office. Wait times increase, hospital’s don’t get paid and the hidden costs of GOP stupidity continues to increase at phenomenal rates.
Ounce of prevention, pound of cure, yada yada yada…
More appropriate for this president: “An ounce of pretention is worth a pound of manure.”
No matter what Republicans say, you can’t get preventive care in an emergency room. Having been in emergency rooms myself, they are really exactly for what they say they are - emergencies. Last time I was in one I checked the labels on the drawers - every other drawer made me shudder at the thought of someone opening it to use the equipment inside on me. The room I was in was equipped for emergency surgery of all types EXCEPT delicate ones.
Using emergency rooms for normal preventive care and regular checkups is incredibly stupid, especially since they’d have to drop everything when a real emergency came through the door.