The House will keep moving on health care reform as the Capitol recovers from snow Monday night. While GOP leaders quickly dismissed the CBO’s report on the replacement bill released late Monday as either incomplete or inaccurate, Democrats held the report as evidence that repeal the law should be stopped. The House appears to be moving full steam ahead. The House Budget Committee is next to consider the American Health Care Act (AHCA) in what should be another eventful, and long, markup.
The analysis by the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation found that the GOP legislation would save money by making large cuts to Medicaid and eliminating the subsidies designed to help low-income people buy insurance under the current law . Those subsidies would be replaced by tax credits that would generally be less generous, the study said.
In the short term, the effect of the Republican plan could be painful, according to the analysis. Next year, 14 million more people would be uninsured than under current law. Average premiums for single policyholders in the individual marketplace would be 15 percent to 20 percent higher than under current law. Premiums would spike mostly because fewer people who are relatively healthy would sign up for insurance once the current law’s mandate to buy coverage ends.
But after a decade, the report said, average premiums would decline by 10 percent compared to current law because of several factors. Those include a new grant program for states, more freedom for insurers to offer less generous coverage and a younger mix of enrollees.
Over in the Senate, GOP Senators huddled with key House committee chairmen, HHS Secretary Tom Price, and Vice President Mike Pence over lunch Tuesday to plot strategy on moving the bill forward in the Senate. Numerous Republican Senators have come out against or with extreme hesitancy to the AHCA.
All the health care issues have overshadowed two Senate confirmations this week, confirming former Indiana Senator Dan Coats as director of national intelligence and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as Trump’s national security adviser.