{UAH} Edward Mulindwa, how are things going????? 23 Million Fewer Americans Would Have Health Coverage Under Obamacare Repeal Plan, Budget Office Confirms | HuffPost
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23 Million Fewer Americans Would Have Health Coverage Under Obamacare Repeal Plan, Budget Office Confirms
Twenty-three million fewer Americans would have insurance under legislation that House Republicans narrowly passed last month, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Wednesday.
The agency also predicted the deficit would come down by $119 billion over the next decade ― and that premiums for people buying insurance on their own would be relatively lower than those premiums would be if the Affordable Care Act stays in place.
But the reasons health insurance would be less expensive for some aren't much to cheer about, the budget report makes clear. Prices would come down for healthy people because those who are sick or have illness in their medical histories would haveless access to coverage ― and the policies available on the market would tend to be a lot less comprehensive.
In other words, the price for lower premiums would be some combination of higher out-of-pocket costs, fewer covered services, and coverage that would be harder to get for the people who need it most.
Wednesday's assessment of the American Health Care Act ― the House bill to repeal Obamacare ― is relatively similar to the evaluations the Congressional Budget Office issued previously, when it studied earlier versions of the legislation.
But in late April, House leaders rushed to vote on the bill less than 24 hours after making significant modifications, without waiting for the budget office to study how those changes might affect insurance coverage or the federal deficit.
One of those changes would allow states to waive a rule that prohibits insurers from charging higher premiums to people at greater risk of medical problems. Without that rule in place, insurers couldjack up rates for people with pre-existing conditions, effectively making standard coverage unavailable ― and violating a key promise to guarantee insurance for everybody regardless of medical status, which most Republicans had endorsed.
That one provision had the potential to require major revisions of the bill's effects on insurance coverage and the deficit, and in the past week some observers had wondered whether the Congressional Budget Office would conclude that the bill might actually cause the deficit to increase.
Such a finding would have thrown the repeal process into chaos, because Republicans are trying to pass their legislation using the budget reconciliation process ― a special procedure that would effectively make it impossible for Democratsto block the bill using the filibuster in the Senate. But reconciliation bills must meet several conditions and one of those is that they may not cause higher deficits.
As it turns out, the Congressional Budget Office still expects the deficit to come down as a result of the legislation ― although whether the entire bill can get through reconciliation will ultimately depend on rulings from the Senate parliamentarian, who has yet to make a formal pronouncement on the legislation.
There's no magic behind the bill's effects on the budget deficit: The House approved a measure that slashes federal support for low- and middle-income families to obtain health coverage.
Most of the money saved by cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and billions more from financial assistance for those buying private health insurance will be transferred to wealthy households and health care companies in the form of tax cuts, with a small amount left over for deficit reduction.
The Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, brought the number of Americans without insurance to a record low. The law did so by offering tax credits for private insurance and by expanding the Medicaid program, which offers government-sponsored insurance to low-income people.
The Affordable Care Act has also prohibited insurance practices ― like placing annual or lifetime limits on benefits ― that made it difficult for people with the most serious medical problems to pay their bills. And, crucially, the law includes an outright prohibition against insurers rejecting people with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher rates than healthy people.
But to finance the coverage expansion, the Affordable Care Act raised taxes, predominantly on health care companies and the very wealthy. It also forced some people, particularly those whose relatively good health once gave them access to cheap coverage, to pay substantially higher premiums.
Some of these people have decided not to get insurance altogether, making it harder for insurers to balance their books ― to the point where many insurers have jacked up rates considerably or abandoned some local markets altogether.
Democrats have generally called for bolstering the law ― by making tax credits more generous, for example, or using government bargaining power to drive down drug prices, while leaving in place the expansions of Medicaid and all the new insurance rules.
Republicans, by contrast, have sought to weaken or eliminate those rules, and to ratchet back spending on tax credits and Medicaid ― all while rolling backObamacare's taxes, giving relief to the corporations and wealthy people who pay them.
The House bill would do that, and now it's up to the Senate to consider, modify or rewrite that legislation. Even before the House bill passed, a number of Senate Republicans were raising objections about the number of people who might lose coverage as a result. Nevertheless, the SenateGOP is on track to put together legislation of their own that would massively cut back the Medicaid program and provide far less help for those who buy private insurance.
Republicans face a backlash from some voters for undoing the Affordable Care Act's most popular provisions, and the bill violates President Donald Trump's oft-stated promises that he would replace the Affordable Care Act with something better that covered everyone with lower premiums and lower out-of-pocket costs.
But Republicans also fear the wrath of their own core supporters, who strongly support the GOP keeping its years-old vow to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Republican leaders in the Senate have said they hope to vote on a bill before adjourning for the August recess.
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