The Republican repeal bills in the House and Senate both include multi-billion-dollar tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and deep health benefit cuts for the poorest Americans.
This chart shows the stunning trade-off at the heart of the GOP health plan
The House bill would cut taxes by $756 billion over a decade, and most of those gains would go to the richest Americans, independent analyses suggest. (We’re still waiting on a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate bill, which is expected to be released this afternoon). The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the 400 top income households alone would receive $33 billion in tax cuts between 2019 and 2028. This is equivalent to the amount that the federal government spends on Medicaid expansion in four states: Alaska, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Nevada. The Medicaid expansion there covers an estimated 725,800 enrollees.
It’s hard to wrap your head around that disparity: 400 families gaining a tax cut that is offset by ending a program that covers three-quarters of a million of low-income Americans. Our graphics editor Javier Zarracina and I decided to show how those two groups compare visually. Start scrolling to see how many people win in this trade-off, and how many people lose.
14,200
65,200
95,200
135,200
175,200
198,300
238,300
278,300
318,300
358,300
398,300
438,300
478,300
489,900
529,900
569,900
609,900
649,900
689,900
Read more
- I’ve written deep-dive explainers on both the House and Senate bills to replace the Affordable Care Act.
- People who rely on Medicaid actually really like their coverage, a recent Vox/SurveyMonkey poll found.
- Keep up with all of our coverage of the health care debate at Vox’s health care hub.
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