GOP Plan To 'Fix' Obamacare And 'Save Workers' Will Cost $18 Billion, Insure 1 Million Less, Hooray!

Republicans are wasting precisely zero minutes saving America now that they are in charge of all the parts of Congress, thanks A LOT, voters. Destroying Social Security, giving oil lobbyists the Keystone pipeline they've always dreamed of, saving unborned babies from their slutbag mothers, spending more money doing more investigations into how Hillary Rodham Obama murdered Benghazi -- and now they're going to save Obamacare too. Are they not THE BEST? [contextly_sidebar id="K3KWkWHJ4vrcSgLrHEhrficK1FhqEwJB"]

In H.R. 30, a bill with the super-cleverly title the Save American Workers Act of 2015 -- what, you don't care about saving American workers?!? -- Republicans are going to save workers SO HARD and fix Obamacare with a simple amendment to the Internal Revenue Service code, until they can impeach the entire agency altogether because, ugh, taxes and "paying for the government to function" and also "paychecks for members of Congress" and stuff:

To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the 30-hour threshold for classification as a full-time employee for purposes of the employer mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replace it with 40 hours.

How, you might be wondering, does this save American workers? Good question! And the answer is: It doesn't. It's like how the Clear Skies Initiative under (grrrrrrrr, trigger warning) George W. Bush, was not intended to make the skies clear so much as let corporations do all the pollution they wanted. (Also, the Healthy Forests Initiative called to say hi.)

In this case, Republicans are pretty sure it will be better for American workers (wink wink nudge nudge ha ha ha, suckers) if more employers are allowed greater freedom to not have to provide health insurance for their moocher employees. Like, if you are currently working 30 hours a week, and your employer has to pay your health insurance, the Republicans will "save" you by allowing your boss to be all, "Nah, man, from now on, we will only provide coverage for those of you working 40 hours a week, you're welcome."

The commie liberal math-loving freedom-haters at the Congressional Budget Office did some skewed gay wizard math to figure out what the consequences of this "fix" to the Affordable Care Act might be. The answer will AMAZE you:

• Reducethe number of people receiving employment-based coverage -- by about 1 million people;

• Increase the number of people obtaining coverage through Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), or health insurance exchanges — by between 500,000 and 1 million people; and

• Increase the number of uninsured -- by less than 500,000 people.

Hey, that's real cool how fewer people will have coverage through their employers and be dependent on government programs instead, if they're not just straight-up uninsured altogether. Any chance it might cost the government even more money that way too? Because that would really help sell the plan.

As a consequence of the changes in penalties and in people’s sources of insurance coverage, CBO and JCT estimate that enacting H.R. 30 would increase budget deficits by $18.1 billion over the 2015-2020 period and by $53.2 billion over the 2015-2025 period. The 2015-2025 total is the net of $66.4 billion in additional on-budget costs and $13.2 billion in off-budget savings (the latter attributable to increased revenues).

Did you get lost in all those numbers and acronyms? Here, in case you missed it, is the real gift to America -- and its workers! -- in the Republican plan to "fix" Obamacare: an extra $18.1 billion tacked on to the deficit. Neat!

With a plan that screws American workersandtaxpayers -- at the same time! -- it's no wonder Americans are so eager to have Republicans "fix" Obamacare. Except for, like Republican names for legislation, the opposite of that.

[ Congress.gov / Congressional Budget Office via Vox ]