{UAH} Allan/Gook/Pojim: Well well, let the wars begin-CBO: 24 million fewer insured under House bill repealing Obamacare

The Congressional Budget Office announced the highly anticipated report Monday. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

The legislation would lead to 14 million more people being uninsured in 2018 alone.

By Rachana Pradhan

03/13/17 04:15 PM EDT

Updated 03/13/17 04:30 PM EDT

Roughly 24 million more people would be uninsured over a decade if the House Republican Obamacare repeal bill is enacted, according to a much-anticipated Congressional Budget Office analysis that could threaten GOP hopes of getting the measure through the House in the coming weeks.

The legislation would lead to 14 million more people being uninsured in 2018 alone. The nonpartisan scorekeeping office also forecast the GOP plan would cut the deficit by $337 billion over a decade, primarily because of the legislation's cuts to Medicaid and private insurance subsidies.

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The prediction of coverage losses is sure to provide immediate fuel to Democratic arguments that the people who signed up for coverage under Obamacare will be much worse off under the House GOP plan. The numbers could also cripple Republicans' hopes of passing legislation before the April recess, coming as both conservatives and moderates express misgivings about the plan. In total, CBO estimated that 52 million people in the U.S. would be uninsured in 2026 if the House bill became law.

Moderate Republicans worried about precisely the kind of coverage losses the CBO predicted have balked at supporting the House bill. GOP leadership also caught flak from conservatives who criticize the bill as "Obamacare lite" because of the new age-adjusted tax credits it proposes. And some Republican governors who expanded their Medicaid programs under Obamacare have publicly fretted about whether they will have to drop low-income people from the rolls to avoid bankrupting their states.

Republicans in the past week tried to discredit CBO's forecasts in anticipation of the bad news while maintaining that no one will be worse off under the GOP plan.

Apart from rolling back the law's Medicaid expansion beginning in 2020 and making other sweeping changes to the health law, the GOP plan would revamp the entire Medicaid program and cap federal spending based on the number of enrollees by state. The House bill also repeals many of the health law's taxes in 2018, axes the unpopular individual mandate and defunds Planned Parenthood for one year.


CBO: 24 million fewer insured under House bill repealing Obamacare - POLITICO
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/cbo-gop-obamacare-repeal-plan-236007

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