GOP tries to shore up insurance bill

WASHINGTON - The White House and Republican leaders in Congress scrambled on Tuesday to shore up support for their health care bill as critics went on the attack over new estimates that 14 million people would lose insurance coverage in the first year alone.

The findings from the Congressional Budget Office handed fresh ammunition to Democratic opponents of the GOP drive to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law. The new figures, which estimated that 24 million people would lose insurance over a decade, also appeared to strengthen pockets of conservative resistance to the bill and rattle nerves among rankand-file Republicans.

With Washington blanketed in a rare March snow, congressional GOP leaders and top aides to President Donald Trump got to work trying to salvage the legislation, which they hope to push through the House next week and the Senate the week after that. Trump has promised to sign the bill, fulfilling seven years of GOP promises to undo “Obamacare,” even though the legislation breaks the president’s own past promises to safeguard Medicaid and provide health insurance for all.

“We think we’ve created a system that saves money and allows more people to get affordable health care,” Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, said Tuesday morning on MSNBC. Mulvaney disputed the CBO findings about how many people would lose coverage, while highlighting the agency’s conclusions that the GOP bill would reduce the deficit by $337 billion over a decade and lower insurance premiums by around 10 percent starting in 2020. The premium reduction would come only after they rise sharply in 2018 and 2019.

The GOP legislation would use tax credits to help consumers buy health coverage, expand health savings accounts, phase out an expansion of Medicaid and cap that program for the future, end some requirements for health plans under Obama’s law, and scrap a number of taxes.

Republicans say they are not trying to achieve the widespread coverage that Democrats aimed for by including penalties in the Affordable Care Act for people who weren’t covered. Instead Republicans would eliminate that mandate, and their buzzword is “access” to affordable coverage for people who want it.

“You sit there and talk about coverage, but coverage is not the end. People don’t get better with coverage,” Mulvaney said.

Angry Democrats, united against the GOP bill, scoffed at such claims.

“Trumpcare would be a nightmare for the American people,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said at a news conference at the Capitol with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

Criticism also is coming from conservatives who threaten to foil GOP leaders’ plans of swift passage of the legislation before Easter, when Congress is scheduled to go on a two-week recess that could expose lawmakers to town hall fury.