The House of Representatives recently passed The American Health Care Act, and it could lead to significant job losses.
The Senate is currently working on its own version of the bill in secret, making it difficult to gauge what difference there may be. According to a new report by George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health and Commonwealth Fund however, if the Senate passes the bill in the original form presented, the economy stands to lose 924,000 jobs over the subsequent decade. Overall, by 2026, state-level domestic products could fall by $93 billion while business output is also projected to drop by $148 billion.
In particular, it’ll be the 31 states that expanded Medicaid coverage that will suffer the quickest and most gruesome of economic losses.
In a statement by Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the Milken Institute School for Public Health, Ku suggests that tax cuts aimed for higher-income taxpayers will most likely spur initial economic growth. Before adding in: “However, cuts in funding for Medicaid and health subsidies then begin to deepen, triggering sharp job losses and broad disruption of state economies in the following years.”
With projected losses of around 86,000 jobs by 2026, New York takes the hardest hit. Pennsylvania and Florida come in close, with losses of 85,000 and 83,000 respectively. What’s startling however, is that even states such as West Virginia and Maine which significantly lag in population, also stand to lose 10,000 jobs each.
Although there were celebrations held in the Rose Garden after the House passed the AHCA, there were reports of President Trump telling the Republican Senators to configure the bill to be “more generous” and “less mean”.
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