Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) had one condition she was holding out for so that she could vote for tax cuts for her big donors: a vote on Alexander-Murray, the bipartisan fix for the cost-sharing reduction payments to health insurers in the Affordable Care Act. She's been insisting that passing this fix would make up for all the harm caused by repealing the law's individual mandate in the tax bill. Plenty of independent organizations have debunked that, but Collins has blithely ignored the information.
Maybe she'll listen to the Congressional Budget Office. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), co-author of that fix, asked the CBO what the effect of passing both the mandate repeal and her bill would be on their estimates of how many people would lose insurance and how much premiums would be increased. Their response: it wouldn't help at all.
In the estimate of repealing the individual health insurance mandate, the agencies wrote that repealing the mandate would result in a decrease of the number of people with health insurance of 4 million in 2019 and 13 million in 2027. In addition, the agencies estimated that average premiums in the nongroup market would increase by about 10 percent in most years of the decade (with no changes in the ages of people purchasing insurance accounted for), relative to CBO's Summer 2017 baseline projections.
If legislation were enacted that incorporated both the provisions of the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Act [Alexander-Murray] and a repeal of the individual mandate, the agencies expect that the interactions among the provisions would be small; the effects on premiums and the number of people with health insurance coverage would be similar to those referenced above.
Premium increases of about 10 percent, ever year, and 13 million people losing health insurance—4 million next year alone. Murray responded by pointing out the blatant lie her Republican colleagues are parroting: "Today's announcement from nonpartisan budget analysts shows Republicans can't hide behind our bipartisan legislation, which would help undo damage Republicans have already done to families' health care—but won’t do a thing to protect them from the new damage done in Republicans' tax bill."
Hiding behind this bill is precisely what they've been trying to do, but we won't let them.
Senators Collins, Corker, Flake, Johnson, McCain, Murkowksi? All we need are THREE of these Republicans to stop the worst GOP Tax Scam, and the Senate is voting any day. Call your senators at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to vote "no."