22 Million More Uninsured Under Senate Obamacare 'Replacement,' CBO Says | HuffPost Latest News - Action News
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Posted: 2017-07-20T16:35:14Z | Updated: 2017-07-20T19:07:09Z

Twenty-two million more people would be uninsured over the coming decade under the revised Senate health care bill, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) abandoned this legislation Monday because too few Republicans supported it for the measure to advance in the Senate. But after GOP senators met with President Donald Trump Wednesday afternoon and then talked among themselves that evening, the measure is showing renewed signs of life , although its prospects for passage remain dubious.

And, crucially, the new Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation analysis doesnt include major new provisions added to the bill last week to win the support of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and so doesnt fully portray the effects of the legislation on which senators may vote. The Cruz language would establish two separate health insurance markets, one for the healthy and one for the sick, which experts caution would be unsustainable . During a conference call with reporters, a Congressional Budget Office staffer wouldnt indicate a timeline for when the agency will finish projections on the Cruz language.

What hasnt changed is what the legislation, called the Better Care Reconciliation Act , would do. The dramatic increase in the number of Americans without health coverage would be the result of undoing major components of the Affordable Care Act . The bill would slash federal funding for Medicaid by 26 percent. The tax credits available to low- and middle-income households to make private health insurance affordable would be smaller and offered to fewer people.

Medicaid spending would decline $756 billion over 10 years, and the federal government would provide $396 billion less in tax credits for private health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

By 2026, 50 million Americans would lack health coverage, compared with 28 million if the Affordable Care Act were left in place, the Congressional Budget Office projects in its new report. That amounts to 82 percent of Americans younger than 65 that is, below Medicare age with coverage in 2026, compared with 90 percent under current law.

In exchange for these coverage losses and the Senate bills weakening of consumer protections for health insurance policyholders, health care corporations would enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. On net, the bill would reduce the federal budget deficit by $420 billion over the coming decade. Thats $99 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office projected in its score of the older draft of the bill, in part because the new one retains Affordable Care Act taxes on wealthy people.

And although the Senate bill nominally retains the Affordable Care Acts protections for people with pre-existing conditions, it also significantly undermines them.