US Senate healthcare bill would cut insurance for 22 million Americans, CBO says

Twenty-two million Americans would lose insurance over the next decade under the US Senate Republican healthcare bill, a nonpartisan congressional office said on Monday, complicating the path forward for the already-fraught legislation.

The bill is the Senate’s version of a healthcare bill passed by the House of Representatives in May, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found would cost 22 million people healthcare coverage and decrease the federal budget deficit by $119 billion over a 10-year period, largely due to the bill’s steep cuts to the Medicaid health program for the poor and the scaling back of federal assistance for those individuals purchasing their own private coverage.

The highest impact would fall on low-income and elderly Americans, with those between the ages of 55 and 64 bearing a disproportionate share of the burden.

Those who rely on Planned Parenthood for women’s health services would also take a substantial hit, since the Senate bill would defund the organization for a year. The funding prohibition would cause the number of births in the Medicaid program to increase by “several thousand”, the CBO said, affecting predominantly those areas that lack other health clinics or medical practitioners. The CBO projected that about 15% of those people would lose access to care.

The CBO assessment that an additional 15 million people would be uninsured in 2018 under the bill and its prediction that insurance premiums would skyrocket over the first two years prompted concern from both sides.

The legislation introduced last week by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was already in jeopardy, despite expressed optimism by President Donald Trump.

With Democrats uniting in opposition to the draft, Republican leaders have struggled to rally enough support from within their ranks to get the bill over the line.

After the CBO score, Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, said she could not support moving forward on the Bill as written.

Collins' opposition highlights the delicate balance that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must strike as he tries to deliver a legislative win to President Donald Trump by reconciling the Republican Party's moderate and conservative wings.

Moderate senators are concerned about millions of people losing insurance. Key conservative senators have said the Senate bill does not do enough to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, the landmark reform of his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

Republicans view Obamacare as costly government intrusion and say that individual insurance markets are collapsing. Obamacare expanded health coverage to some 20 million Americans by expanding Medicaid and mandating that individuals obtain health insurance.