WASHINGTON (AP) – Premiums and the number of uninsured would soar under a Republican bill Congress passed last year scuttling President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, lawmakers’ nonpartisan budget analyst estimated Tuesday in a report underlining the GOP’s risks in its fresh push to dismantle and replace the health law.
The Congressional Budget Office report wrote that under that 2016 repeal bill, premiums for policies bought from online marketplaces established by Obama’s law would rise up to 25 percent a year after enactment of the GOP measure. They’d about double by 2026.
There’d also be 18 million more uninsured people a year after enactment and 32 million more by 2026, the report projected.
The numbers served as a flashing yellow light for this year’s effort by President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to annul Obama’s law and – in a more complex challenge – institute their own alternative. While Republicans have produced several outlines for how they’d recraft Obama’s 2010 statute, they’ve never united behind one plan despite years of trying and there are many unknowns about what will happen in insurance markets while the GOP effort is underway.
The report also became immediate political fodder for both sides in what is expected to be one of this year’s premier battles in Congress.