Add U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy to the growing chorus of voices expressing concern about the GOP’s Obamacare-replacement plan, which a new Congressional Budget Office analysis says would leave 24 million Americans without uninsurance by 2026.
“It doesn’t look good,” Cassidy tells Bloomberg.
The analysis, released on Monday, also estimates that 4 million Americans could lose health coverage by next year under the GOP health care plan, leaving House Republicans in a bind with its dire picture of the bill’s effects heading into the 2018 congressional elections.
Cassidy, a physician, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine 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 says. “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.
The president is scheduled to speak by telephone today with Anthem Inc. Chairman Joseph Swedish and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Anthem has expressed support for some elements of the GOP Obamacare replacement, saying in a March 9 letter that it “addresses the challenges immediately facing the individual market and will ensure more affordable health plan choices for consumers in the short term.”
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.
