Friday, March 29, 2024

CBO Has Spoken: 14 Million People Would Lose Health Insurance Under GOP’s New Plan

U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) explains the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act during his weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol March 9, 2017 in Washington, DC.
U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) explains the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act during his weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol March 9, 2017 in Washington, DC.

*Fourteen million Americans currently insured under Obamacare would lose their insurance in 2018 under the current House Republican health care bill on the table, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office announced Monday.

The projected loss in coverage next year alone equals about 70 percent of the 20 million or so people who have gained insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act. The total loss in coverage over the next decade would wipe out Obamacare’s gains in coverage, and then some.

The long-anticipated CBO score follows legislation introduced by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) last Monday to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The Republican bill, titled the American Health Care Act, sparked immediate concern among lawmakers in President Trump’s own party, in both the House and the Senate.

Some conservative lawmakers, for example, have argued that the bill doesn’t go far enough, labeling it “Obamacare Lite.” Another element of the bill that has caused concern are the refundable tax credits, which some Republicans say amounts to an entitlement program.

Other moderates in the party are uneasy about the proposal’s impact on Medicaid expansion. Thirty-one states — including 16 with Republican governors — elected to expand Medicaid under Obamacare and have found it to be a successful way of insuring low-income adults at little cost to their states.

The House GOP bill proposes scrapping the enhanced federal funding for Medicaid expansion in 2020 and overhauls the entire program so that states receive a fixed amount of money per enrollee.

“In 2026, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law,” the CBO’s report said.

The Republican bill also would reduce the federal deficit by $337 billion over the next decade, the CBO estimated in an analysis of the proposal, which is currently working its way through the House of Representatives.

The CBO’s projections come days after the Brookings Institution estimated that the the bill would increase the number of uninsured Americans by more than 15 million, and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated it would cost the federal government an additional $600 billion over a decade.

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