CBO: 22 Million More Uninsured Under Latest Version Of Senate Trumpcare Bill

Source: Talking Points Memo




By TIERNEY SNEED Published JULY 20, 2017 12:49 PM
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The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that a new draft of the Senate Obamacare replacement legislation would result in 22 million fewer people with health coverage by 2026, compared to current law.

By 2026, 15 million fewer people would be enrolled in Medicaid, 5 million fewer people would have nongroup coverage and two million fewer people would have coverage through their employer when compared to current law, the CBO said.

The score did not reflect any analysis of a proposal being offered by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would let insurers sell unregulated plans because that amendment was not in the bill text submitted to the CBO its Thursday score. The coverage losses were akin to the ones predicted under the office’s first score of the Senate health care legislation, the Better Care Reconciliation Act. Like the previous version, the latest bill imposed major cuts on the Medicaid program.

“By 2026, spending for that program would be reduced by 26 percent,” the CBO said Thursday. The latest bill would impose $756 billion in cuts to Medicaid by 2026 compared to current law. Three-quarters of those cuts would be the result of the phaseout of the Medicaid expansion, the CBO said.

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New CBO Score Of Senate Trumpcare Bill Won’t Include Cruz Amendment

By TIERNEY SNEED Published JULY 20, 2017 11:46 AM

The score that the Congressional Budget Office is expected to release Thursday of the latest version of the Senate Obamacare replacement legislation will not include analysis of the biggest change to the bill senators may or may not be voting on next week: An amendment by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that the insurance industry already warned would cause “millions of more individuals” to “become uninsured.”

The Senate Budget Committee posted a draft of the legislation dated July 20 that did not include the Cruz language, which had been placed in brackets in a draft dated July 13. His proposal, called the “Consumer Freedom Option,” would allow insurers to sell skimpy, unregulated plans as long as they also sell Obamacare-compliant policies. The concern among insurers, actuaries and policy experts is that such a scheme would severely segment the market and cause premiums to rise beyond the point of affordability for consumers with pre-existing conditions who needed more comprehensive Obamacare plans.

Last week, Republicans hinted that they would move ahead with a vote on Cruz’s proposal without a CBO score on it, claiming that the nonpartisan office was taking too long for their aggressive timelines. Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services offered analysis that was made public Wednesday.

That HHS report painted a rosy picture of the Cruz proposal, claiming that it lowered premiums and boosted enrollments. The report’s methodology was very opaque, however, and the assumptions that it did make were questionable, if not outright bizarre. For instance, it looked at the effect of the Cruz amendment by comparing the Affordable Care Act with that amendment and without it, rather than study how it would interact with the GOP replacement bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

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