The Congressional Budget Office on Monday projected that the number of uninsured people would grow by 14 million in 2018 under the Republican ObamaCare replacement bill, with that number rising to 24 million by 2026.
The long-awaited analysis from the nonpartisan congressional scorekeeper is likely to shake up the debate in Congress over the measure. The estimate of the drop in coverage is even larger than many analysts had predicted.
The report finds that the 24 million people would become uninsured by 2026 largely due to changes in Medicaid. The bill both ends the extra federal funds for the expansion of Medicaid and caps overall federal spending on Medicaid, both of which CBO says would lead to people losing coverage.
Premiums in the individual market for health insurance would increase before 2020 and decrease after that, according to the CBO report.
The elimination of ObamaCare's individual mandate would entice fewer healthy people to sign up for insurance, which could cause premium costs to increase 15 to 20 percent in 2018 and 2019, the CBO found.
But starting in 2020, the increase in average premiums would be offset by a number of provisions in the GOP plan: grants to states, a younger mix of enrollees and the elimination of some insurer requirements.
By 2026, CBO says, average premiums for single policyholders in the individual market would be about 10 percent lower than under ObamaCare.
The GOP bill repeals ObamaCare’s subsidies to buy coverage, replacing them with smaller tax credits, as well as the law’s Medicaid expansion after 2019.
Republicans had expected that the CBO would show a rise in the number of uninsured people, and preemptively went on the offensive against the nonpartisan agency, whose director, Keith Hall, who was appointed by the GOP.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer last week argued CBO was “way off” in its ObamaCare projections.
"If you're looking to the CBO for accuracy, you're looking in the wrong place,” he said.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, meanwhile, argued Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the CBO shouldn’t even try to analyze the bill.
“Sometimes we ask them to do stuff they’re not capable of doing, and estimating the impact of a bill of this size probably isn’t the best use of their time,” he said.
Source: The Hill
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