Tanning salons, lottery winners tackled in GOP healthcare bill
The bill would give the states the ability to pull Medicaid enrollees from the program by counting their lottery winnings as income.
While questions surrounding the fate of the health insurance exchanges and those covered under current Medicaid expansion still loom in the just-released Republican bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, legislators made sure to address the worries of tanning salons in the proposal.
In the bill, dubbed the American Health Care Act, a 10 percent excise tax on tanning salons enacted by the ACA is removed. It's a move legislators say will help an industry that has seen steep losses and many shop closures since the ACA tax was placed on them. The tax was designed to raise revenue to support ACA programs, but it was also meant to restrict an industry that experts have deemed presents a public health hazard. In fact, a recent study in the Journal of Cancer Policy claims tanning devices cost the healthcare industry $343 million a year in medical treatment associated with their use. Further, in 2015 there were 263,600 cases of skin cancer that could be attributed to indoor tanning, the report said.
But tanning was not the only unexpected target of the new bill. Legislators devoted a six-page section to language that restricts lottery winners from being eligible for Medicaid.
The bill would give the states the ability to pull Medicaid enrollees from the program by counting their lottery winnings as income, which could put them above limits for assistance. It generally affects those who win more than $80,000.
While states like Tennessee and Maine have also drafted legislation to bar lottery winners from certain welfare benefits, critics seemed shocked by the attention given to the subject in the new bill, especially when issues like selling insurance across state lines, which President Donald Trump has said should be tied to the reform package, were absent.
"The millions of people who won big on the lottery and who are on Medicaid must be very disappointed. … Seriously?" said Ian Morrison, a healthcare futurist, in a Twitter post.
Twitter: @HenryPowderly
Contact the author: henry.powderly@himssmedia.com
