Senate passage of health bill uncertain
UNITED STATES: The health care bill Senate Republican leaders unveiled last week would increase the number of people in the US without health coverage by 22 million and push up medical costs for millions of other poor and sick Americans, according to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The grim analysis immediately called into question whether Senate Republican leaders will have the votes to proceed with the bill this week as the majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has planned. He can lose only two GOP senators.
One key undecided lawmaker, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, announced a few hours after the report was issued that she would oppose bringing the bill up this week, joining Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who said last week he opposes the legislation.
‘‘I want to work w/ my GOP & Dem colleagues to fix the flaws’’ in the Affordable Care Act, Collins wrote in a Twitter message. ‘‘CBO analysis shows Senate bill won’t do it.’’
Several other senators have said they are uncomfortable with voting this week on the bill. ‘‘They’re trying to jam this thing through,’’ Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. ‘‘All I’m asking is let’s give ourselves a few more days. Maybe a week or two.’’
The budget office report - which comes just days after President Donald Trump called for a bill ‘‘with heart’’ - outlines how the GOP plan would cause a widespread erosion in basic health protections, driven by more than US$1 trillion in cuts to federal health care spending over the next decade.
Some consumers ‘‘would experience substantial increases in what they would spend on health care,’’ the budget office analysis said. Because individual insurance under the Senate bill ‘‘would pay for a smaller average share of benefits,’’ it found, ‘‘most people purchasing it would have higher out-of-pocket spending on health care than under current law.’’
And although budget analysts predicted that average insurance premiums in 2020 would be lower under the Senate bill, analysts noted that would be because insurance would pay for less medical care.
The coverage losses in the Senate bill would completely reverse historic gains in recent years under Obamacare. Over the last four years, the share of people without coverage in the US has been cut in half, dropping to the lowest levels ever recorded, data show.
The Senate bill has spurred widespread condemnation from patient advocates, physicians, hospitals and others.
Yesterday, the American Medical Association added to the pressure on senators, sending the chamber’s leaders a blunt warning: ‘‘Congress should be working to increase the number of Americans with access to quality, affordable health insurance instead of pursuing policies that have the opposite effect,’’ the medical group said.
In the face of such criticism, McConnell and his allies have been scrambling to lock down the remaining votes they need.
A key moment could come as early as Thursday with a procedural vote allowing the Senate to begin debate on the bill.
Senators have said the report from the budget office, which Congress has traditionally relied on for estimates of the impact of major legislation, would be important to their decision on how to vote.
Yesterday, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., a Republican leader, celebrated the budget report’s predictions of lower premiums.
The White House pushed back at the budget office, however, claiming that its past analyses have shown a ‘‘history of inaccuracy’’ and should ‘‘not be trusted blindly.’’
In reality, the budget office’s predictions about the Affordable Care Act accurately projected the increase in the number of Americans who would gain insurance, although analysts overestimated the number of people who would get insurance through the marketplaces the law created and underestimated the number who would be covered on their jobs.
The new budget office report suggests the effects of the Senate bill would be particularly hard on millions of low- and middle-income Americans, as it forces states to scale back their safety nets and prompts insurers to pare down benefits and raise deductibles in response to weakened regulations.
‘‘The share of services covered by insurance would be smaller,’’ the report concludes. That, coupled with high deductibles, would drive many consumers from the market. ’’Few low-income people would purchase any plan,’’ the analysts concluded. - LA Times