Severe impact predicted in Michigan if new health care bill passes

By ISAAC CONSTANS
Capital News Service
LANSING — About 2.5 million Michiganders could lose health care coverage under the Republican-proposed replacement for the Affordable Care Act, according to the Michigan League for Public Policy. The study comes on the heels of a Congressional Budget Office projection that the recently introduced American Health Care Act(AHCA)  would cause 24 million people to lose their insurance over 10 years, while reducing the federal deficit by about $337 billion. The Republican proposal jeopardizes the Healthy Michigan Plan, the Michigan Medicaid expansion that has insured 650,000 residents under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. The ACA would be repealed and replaced with the AHCA. “As far as the Healthy Michigan Plan, one of the biggest concerns as proposed by the AHCA is that it essentially ends the program in 2020,” Emily Schwarzkopf, a policy analyst for the League for Public Policy, said.