Romney plan would leave 72 million uninsured

Mitt Romney's recipe for disaster. Last week, Families USA released an analysis of Mitt Romney's health care plan; not Romneycare, but what he's come up with since he started running for president, for Pete's sake. They estimated that about 60 million Americans would become uninsured under Romney/Ryan, up from roughly 48 million now. Turns out, Families USA might have been optimistic.

Another new study finds that the number of uninsured under Romney/Ryan could be much, much higher.

The analysis by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based health care research foundation, found that under Romney's health care plan, the uninsured population would soar to 72 million by 2022 ' 12 million higher than if nothing had been done at all.

By contrast, if President Barack Obama's health care law is fully implemented ' including complete state participation in the now voluntary Medicaid expansion ' the number of uninsured people would drop from 47.9 million in 2011 to about 27.1 million people in 2022, the report estimated. [...]

The report says most of the difference is due to Romney's plans for Medicaid, which he would turn into block grants, and the expansion of Medicaid that's planned under the ACA. The gap between those two proposals accounts for about 80 percent of the difference in their impact on the uninsured, according to the analysis.

This analysis reiterates much of what other analyses have highlighted: repealing Obamacare, as Romney says he would do, would shorten the Medicare trust fund solvency period; seniors in the prescription drug donut hole would pay more for prescriptions; Medicare patients and people with private insurance would once again have to make co-payments for preventive services and annual wellness visits. In addition, the Romney/Ryan voucherized Medicare would likely increase out-of-pocket expenses for seniors because the value of the voucher would likely not keep pace with the increase in health care costs.

What Romney/Ryan want to do Amercia's health care system would make it far worse that the pre-Obamacare status quo, just in terms of what they would do to Medicaid and Medicare. Throw in any give-aways they'll come up with for PhRMA and the insurers and device manufacturers and every other big money health care industry group, and it could be even more disastrous.