The GOP Fix for Obamacare: Rich Get Tax Breaks While Millions of Others Lose Healthcare

House Republicans have unveiled long-awaited legislation to repeal much of the Affordable Care Act—also known as Obamacare—including its expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor. The proposal includes a large tax break for insurance companies that pay their CEOs over $500,000 per year. It also defunds Planned Parenthood and eliminates abortion coverage. The Republican proposal does retain Obamacare’s requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions. However, it scraps the revenue-generating mechanism that makes this possible: the individual mandate, which required all Americans to sign up for health insurance or pay a fee. President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans have repeatedly promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, but their efforts have faced internal divisions as well as sustained outcry from constituents at town hall meetings across the country. For more, we speak with John McDonough, professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the former executive director of Health Care for All in Massachusetts, which played a key role in the passage of the 2006 Massachusetts health reform law.