How many more people would lack coverage under Cassidy-Graham? We can guess.
It’s safe to say the new Obamacare rollback measure toward which the Senate is charging would mean fewer Americans have health coverage. Exactly how many is unclear. Some argue it could be more than 22 million people. Others told me it could be fewer.
The latest proposal — by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — suffers from the same fundamental problems as all of its predecessors. Aiming to lower insurance costs for the healthy, it would allow states to herd people with preexisting conditions or potentially expensive risks — say, women who might want maternity coverage — into insurance gulags with egregiously high premiums.
The bill, which Cassidy proposed with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was approaching Senate floor consideration when Kimmel took aim at the bill’s impact on some Americans’ ability to secure health insurance.