Congressional Budget Office says 24 million will lose health insurance with Trumpcare, says Washington Post
Mar 13, 2017 16:58:22 #
By Elise Viebeck, Amy Goldstein and Kelsey Snell March 13 at 4:39 PM
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s proposal to revise the Affordable Care Act would lower the number of Americans with health insurance by 24 million while reducing the federal deficit by $337 billion by 2026, congressional budget analysts said Monday.
The report from the Congressional Budget Office underscores the dramatic loss in health insurance coverage that would take place if the GOP health-care plan is enacted, potentially contradicting President Trump’s vow that the plan would provide “insurance for everybody” and threatening support from moderate Republican lawmakers.
Fourteen million people would lose health coverage next year alone, the report stated. Premiums would be 15 to 20 percent higher in the first year compared to the ACA, and 10 percent lower on average after 2026. By and large, older Americans would pay “substantially” more and younger Americans less, the report states.
Proponents of the plan, led by Ryan (R-Wis.), have argued the total number of people covered is the wrong way to measure the law’s impact.
The CBO report marks the beginning of a new phase in the debate over the week-old health-care bill, which is moving through the House on an accelerated timetable despite opposition from Republicans, Democrats and virtually every sector of the U.S. health-care industry. Conservative Republicans, in particular, have demanded changes to the measure in exchange for their support.
VIEW GRAPHIC
What’s next for the Obamacare replacement bill
[The GOP’s dramatic change in strategy to pass its health care law]
The White House has spent the last week engaged in a charm offensive aimed at bringing those conservatives on board, as well as an effort to discredit the CBO before it released numbers that might cast the plan in a negative light.
“If you’re looking to the CBO for accuracy, you’re looking in the wrong place,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week.
Ryan had predicted that the CBO would forecast a loss in coverage, but he suggested those affected would merely be exercising their choice not to buy health plans, a choice that is currently penalized under the ACA.
“CBO will say, ‘Well, gosh, not as many people will get coverage,’” Ryan said Sunday in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “You know why? Because this isn’t a government mandate.”
“It’s up to people,” he said. “People are going to do what they want to do with their lives because we believe in individual freedom in this country.”
The ACA has increased coverage by 20 million to 22 million – almost half of those through the insurance markets the law created for people who cannot get affordable coverage through a job, and the rest through an expansion of Medicaid in 31 states and the District of Columbia.
According to the CBO, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured in 2026, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.
The Trump administration led a broad effort to undercut the CBO over the weekend, including pointing out flaws in its forecasts for the ACA.
“If the CBO was right about Obamacare to begin with, there’d be 8 million more people on Obamacare today than there actually are,” said Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, disputing the accuracy of CBO data. “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.”
“The CBO estimate five, six, seven years ago when this started, they estimated that over 20 million people would have coverage at the end of the ten-year window,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “In fact, it’s about half of that right now. So CBO has been very adept in not providing appropriate coverage statistics.”
Price, the former chairman of the House Budget Committee, had previously celebrated the selection of CBO Director Keith Hall in 2015, saying he would bring an “impressive level of economic expertise and experience.”
In private meetings last week, Trump suggested he was open to significant changes to the bill to appease hardliners skeptical of the bill. By the end of the week, however, the White House clarified it was siding with House Republican leaders on at least one request from the hardliners: speeding up cuts to Medicaid eligibility.
“Right now, the date that’s in the bill is what the president supports,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. “It’s not a question of negotiation,” he added.
On Friday, members of the House Freedom Caucus remained split over which elements more urgently needed change. Some called for changing the Medicaid timetable, while others urged the elimination of basic benefit requirements for health plans.
On Sunday, a growing group of conservatives was still threatening to kill the plan unless GOP leaders agreed to renegotiate parts of it.
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“He will not have the votes,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said of Ryan on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Everybody is being nice to everybody because they want us to vote for this, but we’re not going to vote for it.”
In January, Trump had promised to replace the ACA with a plan that provided “insurance for everybody.”
“There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us,” Trump said in a Jan. 15 interview with The Washington Post.
“It’s not going to be their plan,” Trump said of people covered under the Affordable Care Act. “It’ll be another plan. But they’ll be beautifully covered. I don’t want single-payer. What I do want is to be able to take care of people.”
And note that the Administration is using the "alternative facts" argument already. Touting "access to health care insurance" is an absurd argument. I have "access" to the Rolls Royce showroom, but hardly the wherewithal for a purchase. Trumpcare will leave millions looking into the showroom, but unable to purchase.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s proposal to revise the Affordable Care Act would lower the number of Americans with health insurance by 24 million while reducing the federal deficit by $337 billion by 2026, congressional budget analysts said Monday.
The report from the Congressional Budget Office underscores the dramatic loss in health insurance coverage that would take place if the GOP health-care plan is enacted, potentially contradicting President Trump’s vow that the plan would provide “insurance for everybody” and threatening support from moderate Republican lawmakers.
Fourteen million people would lose health coverage next year alone, the report stated. Premiums would be 15 to 20 percent higher in the first year compared to the ACA, and 10 percent lower on average after 2026. By and large, older Americans would pay “substantially” more and younger Americans less, the report states.
Proponents of the plan, led by Ryan (R-Wis.), have argued the total number of people covered is the wrong way to measure the law’s impact.
The CBO report marks the beginning of a new phase in the debate over the week-old health-care bill, which is moving through the House on an accelerated timetable despite opposition from Republicans, Democrats and virtually every sector of the U.S. health-care industry. Conservative Republicans, in particular, have demanded changes to the measure in exchange for their support.
VIEW GRAPHIC
What’s next for the Obamacare replacement bill
[The GOP’s dramatic change in strategy to pass its health care law]
The White House has spent the last week engaged in a charm offensive aimed at bringing those conservatives on board, as well as an effort to discredit the CBO before it released numbers that might cast the plan in a negative light.
“If you’re looking to the CBO for accuracy, you’re looking in the wrong place,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week.
Ryan had predicted that the CBO would forecast a loss in coverage, but he suggested those affected would merely be exercising their choice not to buy health plans, a choice that is currently penalized under the ACA.
“CBO will say, ‘Well, gosh, not as many people will get coverage,’” Ryan said Sunday in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “You know why? Because this isn’t a government mandate.”
“It’s up to people,” he said. “People are going to do what they want to do with their lives because we believe in individual freedom in this country.”
The ACA has increased coverage by 20 million to 22 million – almost half of those through the insurance markets the law created for people who cannot get affordable coverage through a job, and the rest through an expansion of Medicaid in 31 states and the District of Columbia.
According to the CBO, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured in 2026, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.
The Trump administration led a broad effort to undercut the CBO over the weekend, including pointing out flaws in its forecasts for the ACA.
“If the CBO was right about Obamacare to begin with, there’d be 8 million more people on Obamacare today than there actually are,” said Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, disputing the accuracy of CBO data. “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.”
“The CBO estimate five, six, seven years ago when this started, they estimated that over 20 million people would have coverage at the end of the ten-year window,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “In fact, it’s about half of that right now. So CBO has been very adept in not providing appropriate coverage statistics.”
Price, the former chairman of the House Budget Committee, had previously celebrated the selection of CBO Director Keith Hall in 2015, saying he would bring an “impressive level of economic expertise and experience.”
In private meetings last week, Trump suggested he was open to significant changes to the bill to appease hardliners skeptical of the bill. By the end of the week, however, the White House clarified it was siding with House Republican leaders on at least one request from the hardliners: speeding up cuts to Medicaid eligibility.
“Right now, the date that’s in the bill is what the president supports,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. “It’s not a question of negotiation,” he added.
On Friday, members of the House Freedom Caucus remained split over which elements more urgently needed change. Some called for changing the Medicaid timetable, while others urged the elimination of basic benefit requirements for health plans.
On Sunday, a growing group of conservatives was still threatening to kill the plan unless GOP leaders agreed to renegotiate parts of it.
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The day's most important stories.
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“He will not have the votes,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said of Ryan on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Everybody is being nice to everybody because they want us to vote for this, but we’re not going to vote for it.”
In January, Trump had promised to replace the ACA with a plan that provided “insurance for everybody.”
“There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us,” Trump said in a Jan. 15 interview with The Washington Post.
“It’s not going to be their plan,” Trump said of people covered under the Affordable Care Act. “It’ll be another plan. But they’ll be beautifully covered. I don’t want single-payer. What I do want is to be able to take care of people.”
And note that the Administration is using the "alternative facts" argument already. Touting "access to health care insurance" is an absurd argument. I have "access" to the Rolls Royce showroom, but hardly the wherewithal for a purchase. Trumpcare will leave millions looking into the showroom, but unable to purchase.
Mar 13, 2017 17:06:32 #
It is what it is, Obamacare is not working, and it will not work period, it is dying on the vine. So, when libs suggest that we all pay for their social programs maybe folks like me will listen, but as long as they ask only the so called wealthy and or future generations to pay, well screw it, not going in for that.
Mar 13, 2017 17:13:05 #
The CBO is a bipartisan congressional oversight committee formed to put actual spending facts onto lose ideas or laws so congrees would have hard facts.
Wait till PUTOS starts to discredit them via his usual cowardly channel...., tweets.
Wait till PUTOS starts to discredit them via his usual cowardly channel...., tweets.
Mar 13, 2017 17:28:21 #
Many supporters don't really care and as long as he is fulfilling his campaign promises....numerous articles on those most likely to suffer.
Mar 13, 2017 17:28:48 #
The CBO says that 24 millioin will not hgave insurance under the new plan - true enough. But the reason is attributed to those 24 million will choose to have NO INSURANCE, not that insurance will be unavailble to them. Obamacare forced them to buy insurance. With no restrictions on prexisting conditions they do not have to buy insurance if they are young and healthy. They can buy it on the way to the hospital. ThE CBO oredicted that the plan would reduce the deficit. NONE OF OBAMA'S PLANS REDUCED THE DEFICIT.
Mar 13, 2017 17:41:07 #
SharpShooter wrote:
The CBO is a bipartisan congressional oversight committee formed to put actual spending facts onto lose ideas or laws so congrees would have hard facts.
Wait till PUTOS starts to discredit them via his usual cowardly channel...., tweets.
Wait till PUTOS starts to discredit them via his usual cowardly channel...., tweets.
Wrong, the CBO scores legislation or proposed legislation, it does not score ideas. It can only score legislation or proposed legislation as written, it can not invent its own legislative language to score. The democrats were quite crafty in the creation of Obamacare in an attempt to have the CBO score it as cost neutral, it almost worked. Not only did they start collecting taxes long before the program rolled out in an attempt to make it cost neutral over a 10 year period, but the dems were caught trying to double count cost savings in Medicare, cuts to Medicare actually that they tried to count as savings in Medicare and as a new funding source for Obamacare, it was total BS and they were called on it by the CBO. In the end even the CBO was too optimistic as Obamacare never lived up to the CBO's performance expectations.
Now the republicans say that there will be two more installments to their legislation that can not be done through the reconciliation process, many of the measures that the republicans will try and pass in those two installments are designed to make the insurance industry more competitive and will also introduce expanded health savings accounts and deregulation making more plans available to consumers, it is hard to determine how these measures will effect enrollment but it is clear that they are not currently being scored.
Mar 13, 2017 17:58:20 #
boberic wrote:
The CBO says that 24 millioin will not hgave insur... (show quote)
Pick,choose,be selective with numbers,cause and effect. When all is said and done,maybe we shall have an analysis that is believable or least can be understood.
Mar 13, 2017 18:00:57 #
I know that the analogy with auto insurance has been used before, but it still applies. The idea of insurance is that your purchase covers the cost of those who need the funds for a covered event. Since I've never been able to predict an auto accident, I buy insurance, AND in most states drivers are required to buy insurance. Oversimplified, I know.
Young "healthy" people may well forego health insurance, but s**t happens. A friend of mine while we were both college students had a heart attack! Slip on an icy patch and a 20 year old can break an ankle. An emergency room visit ensues, and those of us with insurance essentially pay for this person's irresponsibility in higher rates to "cover" the hospital's costs. Insurance only works if many, many in all age cohorts buy in so that the cost is spread widely. The ACA was/is hardly perfect, but the tiny "penalty" for a break in coverage in Trumpcare would hardly seem to be an adequate stick.
The Republicans had SEVEN YEARS to develop a viable alternative to the ACA. They have labored mightily and given birth to...a mouse, and a crippled mouse at that. Would working WITH the Democrats to fine tune the ACA have been a better idea? Or is bipartisanship dead.
I wonder how much of the Republicans' ideological, almost religious opposition to the ACA and the idea of - god forbid - single pay insurance is merely pandering to the economic elite and deep pocketed insurance and pharma donors. The rest of the industrialized world furnishes comparable or better health care at lower cost. For an enlightening "survey" of being sick around the world see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Healing_of_America Surely we in the US can do better.
Young "healthy" people may well forego health insurance, but s**t happens. A friend of mine while we were both college students had a heart attack! Slip on an icy patch and a 20 year old can break an ankle. An emergency room visit ensues, and those of us with insurance essentially pay for this person's irresponsibility in higher rates to "cover" the hospital's costs. Insurance only works if many, many in all age cohorts buy in so that the cost is spread widely. The ACA was/is hardly perfect, but the tiny "penalty" for a break in coverage in Trumpcare would hardly seem to be an adequate stick.
The Republicans had SEVEN YEARS to develop a viable alternative to the ACA. They have labored mightily and given birth to...a mouse, and a crippled mouse at that. Would working WITH the Democrats to fine tune the ACA have been a better idea? Or is bipartisanship dead.
I wonder how much of the Republicans' ideological, almost religious opposition to the ACA and the idea of - god forbid - single pay insurance is merely pandering to the economic elite and deep pocketed insurance and pharma donors. The rest of the industrialized world furnishes comparable or better health care at lower cost. For an enlightening "survey" of being sick around the world see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Healing_of_America Surely we in the US can do better.
Mar 13, 2017 18:35:27 #
Blurryeyed wrote:
Wrong, the CBO scores legislation or proposed legi... (show quote)
LoL, that's even craftier!!
Pass an incredibly perverse piece of legislation by promising to pass two other pieces that can't be passed, to make the first one work.
That way you can hold congress hostage to pass the other two! LoL
I hope the Wingbutts get their asses handed to them by congress , even a wingbutt congress.
I hope no one goes onto Trampcurse because it's so tax saving to billionaires. No one will be any worse off than they were before ACA and will only suffer for 3 years till Air Force One dumps Tramp and his grotesque family off in the swamp that is Mar a Ciego!!!!
SS
Mar 13, 2017 18:38:48 #
The rich will get their tax credits,so all is well. The CBO is not run by rocket scientists either.
Mar 13, 2017 18:45:06 #
GeorgeH wrote:
The Republicans had SEVEN YEARS to develop a viable alternative to the ACA.
They have labored mightily and given birth to...a mouse
The Republicans had SEVEN YEARS to develop a viable alternative to the ACA.
They have labored mightily and given birth to...a mouse
It was a MOUSE?!?!?? My apologies...., it was small and brown...., SORRY...., I THOUGHT IT WAS A TURD !!!
SS
Mar 13, 2017 18:46:53 #
SharpShooter wrote:
LoL, that's even craftier!! br Pass an incredibly ... (show quote)
You're a funny guy, the dems have massively screwed up healthcare, it is failing and will not last 2 more years, they have forced people not only to purchase a product by law, but to purchase an expensive product that in many cases is absolutely useless, both insurance and medical services have been so over regulated that nothing is currently working as intended, providers and insurers are dropping out, Obamacare is doomed. Arrogant dems such as yourself have the cojones to criticize the republicans when they are trying to clean up the mess that your party created, there can be no mistaking that the dems were arrogant assholes when they passed the law, and they continue to be as they try and defend the failing legislation.... Maybe, the democrats would work in the interest of the American people and help pass the next 2 legs of the law.... but I wouldn't count on it, political mileage out of American suffering is much more important to the dems as we saw in the governmental shutdown a few years back when the Obama administration with glee made the shutdown as hard on the American people as they possibly could.
Mar 13, 2017 18:53:08 #
One does wonder where in the constitution federal involvement in health care is mentioned.
Mar 13, 2017 18:57:01 #
The usual procedure is to keep badmouthing the current law and making excuses rather than constructing a legitimate replacement. It would be nice to see an honest evaluation of the existing law and it's shortcomings,rather than the biased critiques we all know and love. It would also be nice to see the same honest critique regarding the new proposal. LOL,honesty is no longer in our vocabulary. 
Mar 13, 2017 18:57:27 #
GeorgeH wrote:
I know that the analogy with auto insurance has been used before, but it still applies. The idea of insurance is that your purchase covers the cost of those who need the funds for a covered event. Since I've never been able to predict an auto accident, I buy insurance, AND in most states drivers are required to buy insurance.
It's a bad analogy, although people keep using it. Car insurance is required if, and only if, on owns and registers a car to be driven on public roadways, and one does not self-insure. My grandparents had no car insurance, nor did my dad for years, nor I until I moved out of NYC. It was only when I finally bought a car that I was required to buy insurance.
There are many people that go without auto insurance. I bet Trump is one, and it wouldn't surprise me if Warren Buffet was one.
The mandate to buy health care insurance applies regardless of choice, which makes it different in kind, not merely degree, from auto insurance.
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