REPEAL & DIE
TRUMPCARE WOULD HIT 22 MILLION
WASHINGTON — The Senate’s version of the Obamacare repeal would leave 22 million people without health insurance in the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday — barely better than the much-maligned House bill.
The CBO found the recently released Senate bill would leave 15 million Americans without health insurance next year.
That number would climb over the next decade as states would be forced to shrink their Medicaid coverage.
The CBO had found the House’s version of the legislation — which President Trump has called “mean” — would leave 23 million Americans with insurance a decade from now.
The analysis comes days after Senate GOP leaders made their bill public, and as they try to ram through the legislation before the Fourth of July recess. And it further fueled concerns from both centrist and hard-line conservative Republicans who have voiced concerns about the bill as it stands.
“This CBO report should be the end of the road for Trumpcare. Republicans would be wise to read it like a giant stop sign, urging them to turn back from this path that would be disastrous for the country, and their party,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Centrist Republicans, whose votes could make or break the bill’s chance to become law, weren’t thrilled.
“I want to work w/ my GOP & Dem colleagues to fix the flaws in ACA. CBO analysis shows Senate bill won’t do it,” tweeted Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key moderate. “Medicaid cuts hurt most vulnerable Americans; access to healthcare in rural areas threatened.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) was also harshly critical of the Senate bill, aligning himself with conservatives who object to some of the remaining Obama-era mandates. But he echoed Democrats’ concerns as well about his party’s rushed timeline.
While the CBO’s prediction of a sharp increase in the number in Americans who wouldn’t have insurance worries moderates, conservatives have warned the bill does too little to drive down premiums. On that score, GOP leaders got a bit of good news.
The study found that because of the money the new law would pour into helping stabilize health care markets, “average premiums for benchmark plans for single individuals would be about 30% lower than under current law” in 2020.
But the bill achieves that by pegging its supports to lowercost, higher-deductible plans that offer less coverage rather than the middle-level plans Obamacare emphasizes — meaning more people will buy cheaper plans, and then have to pay more out of pocket when they do get sick. That hits poor people the hardest, as the tax credits don’t account for spikes in out-ofpocket costs.
The savings also drop to 20% by 2026 as the stabilization funds used to help subsidize people in individual markets begin to get phased out.
Those numbers weren’t enough to win over conservatives.
“It’s a terrible bill,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the fiercest critic on the right, told reporters.