23M more left uninsured with GOP care bill: CBO
WASHINGTON — The health care bill Republicans recently pushed through the House would leave 23 million more Americans without insurance and confront others who have costly medical conditions with coverage that could prove unaffordable, Congress’ official budget analysts said Wednesday.
The number of uninsured — projected to immediately jump in 2018 by 14 million — was only a million fewer than the estimate for the House’s previous bill.
Premiums on average would fall compared with former President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul — a chief goal of many Republicans — but that would be partly because policies would typically provide fewer benefits, said the report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
In some regions, people with pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes and cancer and others who were seriously ill “would ultimately be unable to purchase” robust coverage at premiums comparable to today’s prices, “if they could purchase at all,” the report said. That was seen as a knock on 11th-hour changes Republicans made in the bill to gain conservatives’ votes
by letting states get waivers to boost premiums on the ill and reduce coverage requirements.
The report said older people with lower incomes would disproportionately lose coverage. Over half of those becoming uninsured — 14 million people — would come from the bill’s $834 billion in cuts to Medicaid, which provides health coverage to poor and disabled people, over 10 years.
Meanwhile, wealthy Americans and insurance industries still fare best in the House bill.
They stand to benefit from $663 billion in tax cuts over the next decade as the House legislation gradually eliminates taxes that were included in the Affordable Care Act to fund the law’s coverage expansion.
Democrats cited the analysis as further evidence that the GOP effort to repeal Mr. Obama’s 2010 law, a staple of President Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House and those of numerous Republican congressional candidates for years, would be destructive. It comes three weeks after the House narrowly passed the legislation with only Republican votes, and serves as a starting point for Senate Republicans trying to craft their own version, which they say will be different in order to find a majority to repeal and replace-Obamacare.
Mr. Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, assailed the CBO for being inaccurate, with the White House issuing a similar critique.
Many congressional Republicans took a sharply different tack, emphasizing some of the report’s more positive findings.
“This CBO report again confirms that the American Health Care Act achieves our mission: lowering premiums and lowering the deficit. It is another positive step toward keeping our promise to repeal and replace Obamacare,” said House Speaker PaulRyan, R-Wis.
Brent and Casey Dye of Monroeville are worried by the estimate of 14 million fewer people with health insurance by 2018, and about the Medicaid cuts. Mr. Dye, 41, was furloughed from his job as a chemical engineer in Williamsport, Pa., before deciding to enroll at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall to become a science teacher, an occupation that he hopes has better job prospects.
The couple’s 8-year-old daughter Francesca was diagnosed with a speech-language problem when she was 3 years old and receives weekly speech therapy and other help through a special Pennsylvania Medicaid program called PH-95, which is not available in Ohio, Florida or Arizona, where the Dyes considered moving because family members live there, said Ms. Dye, a 41year-old licensed practical nurse.
Pennsylvania makes the help available to anyone under age 18 who has disabilities, regardless of family income, and health care consultants say spending on such programs will be the first to be cut if the Obamacare repeal, now pending in the Senate, becomes law.
The Dyes say the services for their daughter are valued at $2,400 a month, which they would not be able to afford without the state’s help.
“We want what every parent wants and that is for Chessie to be a productive member of society,” Ms. Dye said. “We’re staying in Pennsylvania because Chessie would not be covered elsewhere.”