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Rep. Doyle On Graham-Cassidy Bill: 'We Are Talking About People's Lives Here'

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PITTSBURGH (NewsRadio 1020 KDKA/AP) - On Thursday's edition of the Mike Pintek Show, Stoney Richards, who is filling in for Mike, talked with U.S. Congressman Mike Doyle (D-14th Congressional District) about efforts to end "Obamacare."

A study finds the latest GOP effort to end "Obamacare" would take federal dollars away from states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

The study says the states that didn't expand Medicaid would initially get more federal dollars under the Republican Graham-Cassidy bill.

The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation study came out Thursday. It estimates the states that didn't expand Medicaid would get an average of 12 percent more.

"The American public soundly rejected Republican alternatives to the ACA, and we thought that we finally had a chance to maybe sit down in a bi-partisan basis and start to address some of the concerns in the individual markets, and now see at the last minute, Republican leadership pulling the plug on that bi-partisanship," said Doyle.

The study says states that expanded Medicaid to serve more low-income adults would face a cut of around 11 percent from 2020-2026.

The biggest losers, percentage-wise, would be: New York, Oregon, Connecticut, Vermont and Minnesota. California would be the biggest loser in dollars.

The biggest winners would be: Mississippi, Texas, Kansas, Georgia, South Dakota and Tennessee.

But the study says those gains could vanish over time.

"I don't know how any of the Pennsylvania delegation could vote for this. This will be a huge cut to Pennsylvania," said Doyle.

Success is far from assured, but many Republicans are feeling pressure to get it done.

GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana, and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham have spent weeks concocting and selling the party's new approach to scrapping Obamacare.

They say their proposal, shifting money and decision-making from Washington to the states, nearly has the votes it would need in a showdown expected next week, a deadline that's focused the party on making a final run at the issue.

(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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