How Graham-Cassidy would endanger SC children

Even if it never comes to a vote before a Saturday deadline renders it moot, we need to understand the problems with the Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, because the idea is unlikely to die.

The Graham-Cassidy bill would create devastating changes for the Medicaid program in South Carolina and nationwide. Children make up 60.6 percent of Medicaid recipients in South Carolina. That’s 488,000 low-income children who depend upon Medicaid as their health care coverage; as many as 20 percent of them have special health needs.

Graham-Cassidy moves Medicaid funding into a block grant program, and places caps on these grants, which means less money will be available to the states over time. But that doesn’t mean fewer children will get sick. They will simply end up in the emergency room or hospital rather than in a pediatrician’s office because they have no insurance.

The resulting costs will be far higher, and the clinical outcomes will likely be far worse. The hospital will have to absorb these costs, and eventually many will go out of business. When this happens, it no longer matters whether the patient has good health insurance or none at all. Hospital closures affect the wealthy just as much as they affect the poor.

The bill also allows states to opt out of currently guaranteed protections, including availability of coverage for preexisting conditions and the elimination of lifetime caps. A premature infant with an extensive stay in the neonatal intensive care unit could easily reach his lifetime coverage cap before ever leaving the hospital.

Health care should not be a partisan issue. As a pediatrician and a past president of the S.C. chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, I speak for my young patients who have no political voice. I hope for their sake that this bill never becomes law.

This story was originally published September 26, 2017 at 1:23 PM with the headline "How Graham-Cassidy would endanger SC children."