April 14, 2017 02:40 PM UTC

How Many Coloradans Would Trumpcare Kill?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Statesman’s John Tomasic reports, a new report from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities puts a fresh number on the damage the moribund American Health Care Act, a.k.a. Trumpcare, would do in Colorado–and just in case you weren’t already clear on this, it’s pretty bad:

A new report on the House Republican American Health Care Act finds the plan would leave $15 billion in Medicaid costs for Colorado to pay, end the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and likely leave more than 420,000 residents without health care coverage.

The bleak findings of the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities are shocking but not surprising. The organization seeks to move budget debate toward policies that reduce poverty and inequality — and the Republican plan has been critiqued widely for slashing program and funding cuts that would eliminate health coverage for millions of Americans — many of them children and many more of them rural elderly people who backed Trump for president.

“The cuts would be deepest precisely when need is greatest, since federal Medicaid funding would no longer increase automatically when public health emergencies like the opioid epidemic or a natural disaster increase state costs,” the report on Colorado reads. “The [plan] also wouldn’t take into account demographic changes, such as the rise in seniors’ Medicaid costs as they age, meaning states would face even larger cuts over the long run. The share of Colorado seniors who are 85 or older will increase by 42 percent between 2025 and 2035.”

Negotiations on resurrecting Trumpcare have stalled out in Washington, and legislation in the Colorado legislature to repeal the Connect For Health Colorado health insurance marketplace is also stuck. The consensus seems to be that the attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act was disastrous for Republicans, and there is nothing to be gained even by pushing the repeal of the state exchange to its certain death in the Democratic-controlled Colorado House.

Even though Republicans at the state and federal level were happy to vote for health reform repeal measures when they were strictly hypothetical, now that the damage repeal would do is quantifiable and (most importantly) feasible under a Republican majority in Washington, Republicans are unwilling to follow through.

The numbers above tell you all you need to know. It’s political suicide.