24 million might lose coverage with GOP plan
Congressional Budget report undercuts argument for rolling back Obamacare
WASHINGTON — Fourteen million Americans would lose coverage next year under House Republican legislation remaking the nation’s health care system, and the number would balloon to 24 million by 2026, Congress’ budget analysts projected Monday. Their report deals a stiff blow to a GOP drive already under fire from both parties and large segments of the medical industry.
The Congressional Budget Office report undercuts a central argument President Donald Trump and Republicans have cited for swiftly rolling back the 2010 health care overhaul: that the insurance markets created under that statute are “a disaster” and about to implode. The congressional experts said that largely would not be the case, that the market for individual policies “would probably be stable in most areas under either current law or the (GOP) legislation.”
The report also flies in the face of Trump’s talk of “insurance for everybody,” which he stated in January. He has since embraced a less expansive goal — to “increase access” — advanced by House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price told reporters at the White House the report was
“simply wrong” and that he disagreed “strenuously,” saying it omitted the impact of additional GOP legislation and regulatory changes that the Trump administration plans.
Still, the budget office’s estimates provide a detailed, credible appraisal of the Republican effort to unravel former President Barack Obama’s 2010 overhaul. The office has a fourdecade history of evenhandedness and is currently headed by an appointee recommended by Price when he was a representative. Trump has repeatedly attacked the agency’s credibility, citing its significant underestimate of the number of people who would buy insurance on state and federal exchanges under Obamacare.
On the plus side for Republicans, the budget office said the GOP measure would reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the coming decade. That’s largely because it would cut the federal-state Medicaid program for lowincome Americans and eliminate subsidies that the Affordable Care Act provides to millions who buy coverage.
It also said that although the legislation would push premiums upward before 2020 by an average of 15 to 20 percent compared with current law, premiums would move lower after that. By 2026, average premiums for individuals would be 10 percent lower than under Obamacare, it said.
The GOP bill would obliterate the tax penalties the Affordable Care Act imposes on people who don’t buy coverage, and it would eliminate the federal subsidies reflecting peoples’ income and premium costs for millions.
It instead would provide tax credits based largely on recipients’ ages, let insurers charge more for older people and boost premiums for those who let coverage lapse. It would phase out Obama’s expansion of Medicaid to 11 million additional low earners, cap federal spending for the entire program, repeal taxes the statute imposes and halt federal payments to Planned Parenthood for a year.
Administration officials took strong issue with the budget office’s projections of lost coverage.
“We believe that our plan will cover more individuals and at a lower cost and give them the choices that they want,” Price said.
And House Speaker Ryan said in a statement the GOP legislation “is not about forcing people to buy expensive, one-size-fits-all coverage. It is about giving people more choices and better access to a plan they want and can afford.” In fact, on the Fox News Channel, he said the CBO report “exceeded my expectations.”
Not in a good way, Democrats said. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the projections show “just how empty the president’s promises, that everyone will be covered and costs will go down, have been.”
“I hope they would pull the bill. It’s really the only decent thing to do,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.