23 million more uninsured with GOP health bill, analysts say
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.
Premiums on average would fall compared with 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 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 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 income 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.
Democrats cited the analysis as further evidence that the GOP effort to repeal Obama’s 2010 law, a staple of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and those of numerous Republican congressional candidates for years, would be destructive.