GOP health plan to boost uninsured by 24 Million, CBO Says

(Bloomberg) --A new estimate showing that 14 million Americans could lose health coverage by next year under the GOP Obamacare proposal leaves House Republicans in a bind with its dire picture of the bill’s effects heading into the 2018 congressional elections.

Even as the Trump administration challenged the estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, several Senate Republicans said the new analysis suggested that the party may need to rethink its plan.

Republicans “ought to slow down and get this right,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina told reporters Monday night.

The 2018 portrait is particularly awkward. About 14 million more people would be uninsured next year under House Speaker Paul Ryan’s health plan compared to Obamacare. Although the CBO said the measure would eventually reduce the deficit, the cost figures would still be rising through 2018, while premiums would also still be going up.

DI-PaulRyanAHCA_03142017
U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, speaks during a news conference on the American Health Care Act at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 7, 2017. Ryan's new bill to replace Obamacare is being savaged by early bad reviews from a wide range of conservatives, with one Republican senator declaring it "dead on arrival" in the Senate -- if it can make it through the House. Photographer: Zach Gibson/Bloomberg

The long-term picture also poses political risk to Republicans. The number of Americans losing coverage would rise to 24 million in 2026 under the plan, bringing the U.S. uninsured rate to a record 19%, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Entire PlanHouse Republican leaders and the White House, who had been attacking the CBO even before it released its findings, immediately rejected the latest estimates. They said the legislation is only the first of three phases of their health care reform plan.

“The CBO looked at a portion of our plan but not the entire plan,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price told reporters outside the White House.

“We disagree strenuously with the report that was put out,” said Price, who was involved in hand-picking the current CBO director in his previous role as House Budget chairman. “We believe that our plan will cover more individuals at a lower cost and give them the choices that they want, the coverage that they want for themselves and their families.”

But several Senate Republicans said the new estimate shouldn’t be dismissed.

“Rather than attacking the CBO as a way of moving forward, I think the prudent thing for the party to do is to look at the CBO report and see if we can address some of the concerns raised,” Graham said.

Presidential setback

Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said the CBO "estimate that millions of Americans could lose their health insurance coverage if the House bill were to become law is cause for alarm. It should prompt the House to slow down and reconsider certain provisions of the bill." Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, added, “It doesn’t look good.”

Collins and Cassidy have an alternative bill they say is intended to increase coverage.

“Society is going to pay for health care whether it is through insurance or not,” Cassidy, a physician himself, said. “Society will pay for it either through cost shifting to the privately insured or it will pay for it through enhanced disproportionate payments” to hospitals that treat indigent patients.

The coverage estimate is a setback for President Donald Trump, who promised that “insurance for everybody” would replace Obamacare, which used government subsidies and an expansion of Medicaid to bring coverage to 20 million people.

Republicans who have downplayed the CBO’s role point out that the office overestimated by several million the number of people who would sign up for insurance through the Obamacare marketplaces.

Heed warnings

Robert Laszewski, an insurance-industry consultant who’s long been critical of Obamacare, said Republicans should heed the CBO’s warnings of coverage losses, even if they think they’re too high.

“We’re quibbling about how much pain we want to inflict here,” he said.

Republicans picked the current CBO director, Keith Hall, who took over the role in April 2015.

“His vast understanding of economic and labor market policy will be invaluable to the work of CBO and the important role it will continue to play as Congress seeks to enact policies that support a healthy and growing economy,” Price said after Hall was installed.

Republicans trying to pass the legislation without Democratic support argued that any reduction in the rolls of the insured isn’t as important as what they say will be cheaper coverage. Ryan said there will be a stable transition if the bill is passed so “no one has the rug pulled out from under them.”

“Our plan is not about forcing people to buy expensive, one-size-fits-all coverage,” Ryan said in a statement. “It is about giving people more choices and better access to a plan they want and can afford.”

Lower premiums

Insurance premiums will be 15% to 20% higher over the next couple of years, before the GOP replacement plan goes fully into effect, the CBO estimated. They’d fall after that, thanks to more young people signing up and insurers offering skimpier coverage, the CBO says. In a decade, premiums are estimated to be 10% lower than they would have been under Obamacare.

The CBO said the GOP proposal would reduce the deficit by $337 billion over 10 years.

Democrats quickly used the CBO scores to attack the GOP plan. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said the report shows "Trumpcare is an awful deal for the American people."

"The CBO report should be a knockout blow for Republicans in Congress," said Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader. "They should heed this warning and turn back from their plan that would be a disaster for the country."

Coverage LossesThe coverage losses would begin even before many parts of the Republican plan go into effect. The CBO estimates that next year about 14 million fewer people would have insurance, largely because they’d no longer choose to buy it. The losses in coverage after 2018 mainly come from Medicaid, CBO said. By 2026, about 52 million people would be without health insurance. If the Affordable Care Act instead continued, 28 million would be uninsured.

The American Medical Association, which already said it opposes the GOP plan, called the coverage losses under the measure "unacceptable."

“The AMA believes we need continued progress to expand coverage for the uninsured,” Andrew Gurman, the doctor group’s president, said in a statement. “We hope the CBO estimates will motivate all members of Congress to find a pathway to work together on significantly improving proposed health reform legislation ”

Older, poorer people will be hit the hardest under Republicans’ plan.

A 64-year-old earning $26,500 a year would have a $19,500 premium for health insurance and get a tax credit of $4,900, leaving them to pay $14,600, the CBO estimated. That compares to a $15,300 premium under Obamacare with a $13,600 subsidy, leaving them to pay $1,700

Skirt opposition

Ryan is trying to skirt opposition from the conservative wing of the party, which has derided the measure as “Obamacare Lite,” and moderates facing angry constituents who fear losing care. Several key Republican senators have said they can’t vote for the bill in its current form. Ryan has tried to steel party members against the office’s estimate.

The push to kill the Affordable Care Act comes after seven years of quixotic votes against it, each vetoed by President Barack Obama. Republicans have said throwing out the law would fulfill key campaign promises and set the stage for a broad rewrite of the tax code.

The legislation, called the American Health Care Act, repeals Obamacare’s mandate that everyone must have insurance or pay a penalty. It also provides age-based tax credits to help people purchase coverage, though they’re lower than the income-based subsidies offered under current law. The bill will also wind down Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid in 2020. About 12 million people gained coverage in the 31 states that expanded Medicaid.

The cost of the new tax credit for health insurance to be established in 2020 is estimated at $361 billion through 2026, according to the CBO. The biggest spending reduction comes from Medicaid, where the CBO estimates funding will be reduced by $880 billion over a decade. That’ll lead to about a 17% reduction in Medicaid coverage, or 14 million fewer people covered by the program by 2026.

Planned Parenthood would also lose $234 million in funding, and the CBO projects that would reduce access to services aimed at helping women avert pregnancies. Several thousand additional babies will be born because of the lack of access to birth control, the office estimated, costing Medicaid $77 million over a decade.

Two key House committees approved the act last Thursday after marathon sessions in which Democrats offered amendments rejected by Republicans. The bill will head next to the Budget Committee as early as Thursday before being considered by the full House of Representatives.

Bloomberg News
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