Monday Madness – Obamacare Repeal Disaster for States

Losing Obamacare is going to be expensive.

Now that the GOP has a plan on the table to take away health care from over 10M Americans (killing aprroximately 25,000 of them per year in the largest mass-murder in US history), it’s finally dawning on the State Governors, even the GOP Governors, how much this will impact their bottom lines.  Aside from tripling the rates that will be paid by low-income Americans, the GOP plan shifts over $100Bn of spending back to the states who, in turn, are forced to pass it on as more taxes to low-income Americans since state taxes are not generally progressive the way Federal Taxes are.  

No matter how obvious this is to people who understand math and believe in facts, there are still plenty of deplorables out there who simply don’t care how many people die or how awful the replacement plan is – it’s still going to be pushed through.  Aside from slashing Social Security Benefits, cutting Medicaid is the best way to free up money for tax cuts for the rich as well as taking our military budget to new records:

Those are the numbers from the GOP’s presentation to the Governors.  They presented it as a fat turkey that can be carved up and doled out to contributors who play ball with the GOP in the form of tax breaks, military contracts, stimulus spending, etc.  Just take that funding away from the 72M who need it and you can have Billions to play with!  

For the typical individual, who is currently paying for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the cost of the GOP pan is anything but affordable.  

The price of the plan doesn’t change but the Government removes 80% of the subsidy that made the act affordable in the first place.  This causes a 300% increase in monthly payments.  As noted in the footnote, these are OPTIMISTIC assumptions as the GOP plan also increases the amount that insurers can charge older adults by 66%, paving the way for MASSIVE additional increases.

Here’s a replay of the GOP’s official announcement.

Just stand by and let it happen, right?  My article on Friday was blocked for it’s political content over at Seeking Alpha, as was Wednesday and probably today as well, despite the fact that shifting Billions of Dollars away from Health Care and taking away Billions of Dollars worth of disposable income from Consumers will affect our trading decisions for years to come.

When Obamacare was coming, in our 2010 Stock Market Outlook we picked a dozen health care stocks we thought would benefit and those have been some of the decade’s best performers.  These things do matter – you do need to know what’s going on politically.  Some GOP voters are finally wising up but too little, too late, most likely – and they are doomed to some very unpleasant outcomes under this Administration.

We’re waiting for Trump’s first State of the Union Address tomorrow night but what’s he going to say?   The narrative so far is the country is in crisis, the econonomy is a disaster and our enemies are all around us as well as within the country already – just waiting to strike.  Is he seriously going to go on TV tomorrow and say “the state of our union is strong” like every President has before him?

And how will the global markets react to a doom and gloom state of the union address?  As noted by Bloomberg – TRILLIONS of Dollars are on the line on this speech and no one (not even PSW) knows which way it will go.  This is going to be very exciting to watch and, after that, our attention swings back to the Fed and their March 15th meeting.

Until then, feel free to make up your own facts!

I’ll be live at the NY Trader’s Expo today, teaching a couple of seminars.  Hope to see you there!  

Provided courtesy of Phil’s Stock World.