Trumpcare: What Does The U.S. House Vote Mean in Oregon?

With the U.S. House of Representatives' vote to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on Thursday, many Oregonians are wondering how that will affect local health coverage. To provide some answers, the office of Gov. Kate Brown has teamed with the Oregon Health Authority and Oregon Health Insurance Marketplace in creating a website that provides data on precisely what's at stake in the Beaver State.

According to the jointly created website, 95PercentOregon.com, 95 percent of Oregonians, including 98 percent of Oregon children, are insured today. That's compared to the one-in-five Oregonians who lacked healthcare coverage in 2010, the year President Barack Obama signed into law the federal ACA statute — also known as Obamacare.

The vote to implement the American Health Care Act, or Trumpcare, is expected to reduce federal funding so severely that forecasters estimate a shift of costs to the state equaling roughly $190 million in 2020, with that potentially increasing to $1 billion by 2023. This shift in costs will primarily result in the loss of coverage for individuals and families relying on the Oregon Health Plan (the state's Medicaid insurance) and the loss of jobs for medical sector employees.

Click here to read The White House Patch coverage of the May 4 U.S. House American Health Care Act vote.

The House's vote Thursday essentially sets in motion the possibility for several things to happen in Oregon:

• Roughly 465,000 Oregonians could lose coverage — both in Medicaid and private insurance — by 2026. A majority of those who will lose coverage are individuals currently relying on the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) for insurance — roughly 1 million Oregonians today. According to a fact sheet provided on the website, as many as 375,000 OHP customers could lose coverage altogether by 2023, with an estimated 80,000 privately insured citizens losing coverage by next year. Forecasters predict the change will result in the uninsured rate tripling from 5 percent to more than 15 percent by 2023;
• Data shows a gain of 23,300 health care jobs in Oregon since the ACA was implemented, and the Economic Policy Institute estimates a loss of approximately 42,000 jobs with the ACA repealed. Additionally, the state could see a loss of $2.6 billion in federal Medicaid funding between 2020 and 2023, which would reportedly slow economic activity in Oregon with losses expected to drain more than $500 million in direct health spending from the Oregon economy;
• The change to Trumpcare is also expected to result in lower private insurance costs for younger Oregonians as well as mid- to high-income earners, but would increase costs for older residents and low-income earners. In order to qualify for the OHP an individual adult resident needs to make less than $16,100 per year. For a family of four, that threshold increases to $32,900 per year. The average median household income in Oregon in 2015 was $54,148 per year. But that average may be misleading because, incidentally, nearly four-in-10 adults under 65 years old who are currently relying on the OHP are working anyway. This implies that rural, low-wage Oregonians and service industry employees will face the most challenges as a result of this change; and
• The increase in number of uninsured Oregonians will also cause a rise in uncompensated hospital care — adding another layer of burden to the state's economy, as well as the individual wealth of Oregon residents.

Despite the overwhelming list of negative aspects to the House's Thursday vote, at least one Oregon statesman was happy with the change:

Though Walden may be in for a fight with his fellow Oregon politicians, as Sen. Jeff Merkley's Tweet in response to the Trumpcare vote clearly shows:

All of these possibilities, however, are pending an affirmative U.S. Senate vote — which by all indications could be an uphill battle for Trumpcare advocates.

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