It's really one of the weirdest things in the American Health Care Act, the bullshit bill that bullshit Republicans rolled out so their bullshit president could declare that he was St. Donald fighting the Affordable Care Act dragon. From pages 10-16, the bill's authors lay out the conditions by which MegaMillions and Powerball and other winners would have to pay for their own damn health insurance. That new part takes up a tenth of the length of the entire 66 page bill that escaped Mario Kart character Sean Spicer jigged around and pointed at for its brevity, contrasting it with the monstrously huge stack of pages that make up Obamacare (yeah, the black guy's was bigger and you could do more with it).
And the lottery section is just bizarrely precise in talking about the conditions when a lottery winner wouldn't be able to get Medicaid: "a State shall, in determining such eligibility, include such winnings or income (as applicable) as income received— (I) in the month in which such winnings or income (as applicable) is received if the amount of such winnings or income is less than $80,000; (II) over a period of 2 months if the amount of such winnings or income (as applicable) is greater than or equal to $80,000 but less than $90,000; (III) over a period of 3 months if the amount of such winnings or income (as applicable) is greater than or equal to $90,000 but..." You get the idea. Obsessively detailed, no?
This is easy to mock in a "God, how fucking dumb are they?" kind of way. Except, instead, looking at why this language is in the bill reveals something just a little more sinister about the hypocrisy under which the GOP is operating to commit this health care fuckery.
One of the reasons that Republicans are desperately trying to cram the bill through like a limp cock on an unlubed asshole is because the Congressional Budget Office hasn't finished its scoring of the bill to see what its effects might be. When the CBO is done, it will likely reveal that the AHCA is, as previously mentioned, a bullshit bill that will cost a bit less money but kick millions of people off health insurance. Republicans in the House, at least, are trying to maintain the illusion that they're not just complete twat mites who want to straight up murder people to give the wealthy a tax cut, but, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on.
A cynical reader might be thinking, "Well, sure, everyone loves the CBO when it gives them the numbers they want. What's the big deal?" But that's not quite cynical enough.
See, the lottery exclusion up there was actually first brought up in 2016 because, apparently, there are enough winners to make a big damn difference: "Using the typical per capita cost for Medicaid adults, this provision would reduce direct spending by $475 million over the 2016-2026 period." You know who came up with that nearly half-billion dollars in savings because of a seemingly odd provision? The Congressional Budget Office.
That's the depth of hypocrisy occurring here. The Republicans need the CBO's figures to write their goddamn bill, but they are running scared from the CBO when it comes to the final bill's effects on Americans. That's the incredible dickishness involved here.
