CBO: Senate health bill hurts many
WASHINGTON — The health care bill Senate Republican leaders unveiled last week would increase the number of people in the U.S. without health coverage by 22 million and push up medical costs for millions of other poor and sick Americans, according to a new analysis released Monday 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.
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.”
The Senate bill has spurred widespread condemnation from patient advocates, physicians, hospitals and others.
On Monday, 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.
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.
The White House pushed back at the budget office, 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.
The new budget office report suggests the effects of the Senate bill would be particularly hard on millions of low- and middleincome 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.
For example, a 40-year-old American with an income of $26,500 a year would see his or her annual insurance premiums nearly double to $3,000, the budget office found. A 60-year-old with the same income would see premiums nearly quadruple to $6,500.
Americans making even less might only be able to buy health plans with deductibles that were half their annual incomes.
By contrast, higher-income Americans and a number of industries, including health insurers and medical device makers, would reap windfalls as the bill wipes out about $700 billion in taxes over the next decade, according to the budget analysis.
The analysis was similar to what the budget office said about the version of the bill that passed the House in May. That bill would reduce insurance coverage by about 23 million people, the budget office said. The Senate measure would have slightly less impact on overall coverage but would involve a deeper, long-term cut in Medicaid spending than the House measure.