GEORGIA ANGLE

The Senate GOP health care plan is expected to lead to about 680,000 more Georgians losing health insurance, a health care analyst says.

After two high-profile revisions, the GOP health care plan is still expected to lead to hundreds of thousands more Georgians losing health insurance.

The Congressional Budget Office released its score of the Senate plan’s impacts late Monday. The nonpartisan office estimated that 22 million more Americans would be without health insurance at the end of 10 years if the plan becomes law. Georgia’s share of that figure is 680,000 or so, according to a health care analyst who has been following the debate, Bill Custer of Georgia State University.

Georgia advocates for rural hospitals, patients and others likely to feel the cuts howled.

“A lot of that stems from the dismantling of Georgia’s Medicaid program,” said Laura Colbert, the director of outreach at the patient advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future.“I think our biggest takeaway is that the same harmful positions that were in the House plan are in the Senate plan.”

Like the national figure, the Georgia figure is a bit better than it was in either of the two plans developed for a vote in the U.S. House. The one that passed the House in May was estimated to leave some 23 million Americans without insurance, including 720,000 Georgians.

On the other hand, the plan would lower the deficit by $321 billion, the office found.

The White House released a statement lambasting the track record of the CBO.

In Georgia, Kelly McCutchen, the president of the libertarian-leaning Georgia Public Policy Foundation, cautioned that the Senate had already released at least one revision to the draft, which was likely to sway the numbers.

“They generally do a good job, ”McCutchen said of the CBO. He said, however, that once that revision is taken into account, “I think you’ll see the uninsured rate will go down.”