AHCA passage: Chaos and death, but not the end of the world

It looks like the AHCA will pass.  Fooey.

Well, it won't be the utter tragedy that we libs think it will be, but it will be bad.

Some quick things:

• We will go back to healthcare circa 2008:  
• Employer-paid for workers, wherein, mostly, one gets coverage for pre-existing conditions, some amount of pre/postnatal care, etc
• Lousy, expensive insurance for individuals not covered by employer (self-employed, between jobs, laid-off, etc)
• For the poor, emergency rooms
• Medicaid will be canceled for all practical purposes..Some/many hospitals will probably go out of business, as they are not set up to handle the poor in volume
• Some if not many Insurance companies will go out of business due to inability to estimate future customer flow.
• It will be chaos for a year+ until it settles down
• Many will simply die due to unavailability of health care.
• Some states which can afford it, like California, will set up exchanges and mimic and maybe improve Obamacare.  This will be good for California, but nationally will add to the chaos.

The optimist in me says that if California splits with the national “standard”, it will point the way to a bright new future, with things done right.  But the reality is that, as usual, the middle of the country will be left behind, adding to the disunity already visible.

PS - if you are an economist, try modeling the California split.