CBO says 22 million uninsured under Senate plan
The Congressional Budget Office released its score of the Senate health care bill Monday afternoon, finding 22 million more Americans would be uninsured under the GOP plan than if Obamacare remained the law of the land.
The new tally is 1 million fewer, over a 10-year period, than the CBO’s estimate for the House health care bill Republicans passed in early May.
By 2026, if the Senate bill were to be implemented, an estimated 49 million Americans would be uninsured, compared to the 28 million who would likely lack insurance under Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act.
The CBO notes the reason why there are ballooning numbers of uninsured is ‘primarily because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated.’
The Congressional scorekeeper found that the Senate bill, dubbed the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, would reduce federal spending by $321 billion by 2026, a higher cost savings than what the CBO estimated for the House bill, which was $119 billion.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was spotted on Capitol Hill Monday as GOP senators unveiled some changes to their health care plan
Conservative Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., seen surrounded by reporters on Capitol Hill last week, is one of the GOP hold-outs on the Senate health care bill
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chamber’s most well-known moderate, has also expressed reservations on the bill
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has called for the repeal of Obamacare, but won’t vote for the Senate bill in its current form
The No. 1 reason for the savings is the Senate bill reduces the rate of growth for Medicaid. Other savings come from changes in the subsidies that were offered under the Affordable Care Act.
However, savings would be offset by other expenditures, such as money that would go toward trying to bring premiums down, along with revenue lost from no longer charging taxpayers a penalty for not buying health insurance.
The price of premiums, which Republicans have pointed to when explaining why they must quickly act to rid the country of President Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment, will actually rise about 20 percent more in 2018, according to the estimate.
That’s because once the individual mandate – which forces Americans to buy insurance or face a tax penalty – is scrapped, fewer healthier people would be left in the insurance pools.
After the CBO’s numbers dropped Monday afternoon, Republicans immediately went on attack.
‘Remember, the CBO has a long track record of being way off in their modeling, with predictions often differing drastically from what actually happens,’ advised the Republican National Committee’s Deputy Communications Director Mike Reed in an email to reporters.
The CBO’s current director, Keith Hall, worked for President George W. Bush and was appointed by a Republican-led Congress, in an effort spearheaded by Tom Price, the current secretary of Health and Human Services, who supports Republicans’ Obamacare repeal effort.
The office’s scoring of the House bill helped stall support for the measure momentarily, but then conservative Freedom Caucus members and moderates were able to work something out.
President Trump celebrated the feat with a Rose Garden ceremony on May 4, before the second CBO score on the House’s legislation came out.
When it was released the non-partisan scorekeeper estimated that 23 million people would lose health insurance under the House Republican plan over 10 years, when compared to sticking with Obamacare, the status quo.
The original House bill had 24 million people becoming uninsured over that same period, a modest improvement.
The final House health care bill would cause 14 million more people to be uninsured by 2018.
And overall, by 2026, an estimated 51 million people under the age of 65 wouldn’t have health insurance, compared with the 28 million who would be uninsured if Obamacare remained.
49 million would be uninsured under the Senate bill, a slight improvement.
Still, Monday’s scoring will likely be headache-inducing for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who wants senators to vote on the bill this week, before leaving town for the Fourth of July holiday.
The Senate is split 52-48 Republicans to Democrats, with GOP Vice President Mike Pence available to come break a tie, but currently there are five GOP senators who are opposing the bill in its current form.
Conservatives Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Rand Paul, R-Ky., Mike Lee, R-Utah and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., along with the more moderate Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who’s up for re-election in 2018, out of a state that saw Democratic gain in 2016, despite a Republican sweep across the country.
‘I think it’s a lot to digest in one week,’ Paul said on CNN Monday, worrying that lawmakers didn’t have enough time to read the bill and what the CBO says.
Paul also revealed on CNN that Senate leadership hasn’t been negotiating with his office, advising that the White House tell McConnell’s team that it needs to work with the hold-outs if it wants their support.
Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump had personally talked to Paul, Johnson and Cruz, among others.
Three other senators are expressing concerns.
Not surprisingly one of them is Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, considered the most moderate voice of the chamber.
She’s joined by another moderate, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D.
The White House, however, sounded optimistic before the CBO score came out.
‘He’s very pleased with the developments that have come,’ Press Secretary Sean Spicer said from the podium today, during an off-camera briefing. ‘He’s been impressed with the work,’ Spicer said of Trump.
‘He, obviously, as you mentioned, wants a bill that has heart. He wants a bill that does what it’s supposed to do. When you look at what happened with Obamacare, he wants to make sure we think through this,’ Spicer added.
The press secretary confirmed that Trump had spoken with a number of senators over the weekend, though was unable to say whether the president had crossed the aisle and talked to Democrats, and downplayed any damage the CBO score could do to the effort.
‘I think we’ve addressed CBO scores in the past,’ Spicer said.
The White House has previously cast doubt on the CBO’s ability to project the number of insured Americans.
‘We feel very confident with where the bill is and he’s going to continue to listen to senators who have ideas about how to strengthen it, but it’s going to follow the same plan as we have,’ Spicer said.
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