The Trump White House, in an effort to double-check the ugly numbers coming from the Congressional Budget Office, ran their own analysis to determine the results of the new healthcare bill. And just as they suspected, the CBO is wrong … because it’s worse.
The executive branch analysis forecast that 26 million people would lose coverage over the next decade, versus the 24 million CBO estimates. The White House has made efforts to discredit the forecasts from the nonpartisan CBO.
Of course, the number of people getting insured is no longer important as Republicans are working hard to redefine healthcare access as the “ability to buy” a policy. That the policy isn’t affordable doesn’t matter. Everyone in America can buy healthcare, if they’re rich enough (insert sound of satisfied conservatives sighing in relief) and only if they’re rich enough. Job done.
Republicans had been maintaining while the Affordable Care Act might give more people insurance, the real problem was healthcare costs. But they’ve abandoned that metric now that it’s clear that their bill not only kicks more people to the curb, it’s also more costly for those who remain.
The CBO also estimates that premiums for individual health plans in next year and in 2019 would on average by 15 to 20 percent higher than what they would be under Obamacare.
And because the bill would eliminated subsidies for lower-income customers' out-of-pocket health costs, their share of those costs would increase.
70 percent of those who gained insurance through the ACA will lose their insurance in the first year of the new Republican bill. Those who remain in the system won’t see savings, but both higher premiums and higher out of pocket costs — for insurance that does less.
Anyone hoping that the Affordable Care Act will remain in place for now because of squabbling on the right point to outlets like Breitbart attacking the bill. However, that’s a very slim and unreliable reed on which to place any hope. Conservatives and their media outlets may rail against the bill at the outset to bolster their more-Scrooge-than-thou credentials.
The House bill was already under attack from both very conservative members who wanted it to go further, as well as moderates worried about coverage erosion particularly in Medicaid. The CBO number made the task of passing it even more challenging.
But “grudging acceptance” is always just around the corner. After all, since most Trump supporters believe Trump and not the media, they only have to lie about the outcome of their bill — easy as breathing.
In fact, the miserable results of Trumpcare, a mangled system that doesn’t work for millions and is both more costly and more ineffective, serves anti-government Republicans well. Like everything else they do, making government less effective is a win.
