WASHINGTON (AP) – Congress’ official budget analyst is projecting that the House Republican health care bill would produce 23 million more uninsured people and costly, perhaps unaffordable coverage for the seriously ill. Now Republicans in the Senate have to decide how to make their version different.
The Congressional Budget Office report, issued Wednesday, also found that average premiums would fall compared with President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, a chief goal of many Republicans. But that would be partly because policies would typically provide fewer benefits and sicker people would be priced out, it concluded.
The results gave Democrats ammunition to attack the GOP drive to scuttle former President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul as damaging to patients.
Three weeks after the House narrowly approved the measure with GOP-only votes and after several embarrassing setbacks, Republican senators said they’d move in their own direction and dismissed the report’s impact.
In closed-door meetings aimed at crafting a measure, GOP senators have discussed changing the House’s proposed Medicaid cuts and aiming health care tax credits more toward low earners, but they’ve reported little progress.