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The new official analysis of the American Health Care Act, taking into account recent amendments from House leadership submitted late Monday night, still shows the number of uninsured would increase by an estimated 24 million people — but this time the bill will reduce the deficit by even less.
“As a result of those amendments, this estimate shows smaller savings over the next 10 years than the estimate that CBO issued on March 13 for the reconciliation recommendations of the House Committee on Ways and Means and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce,” the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday afternoon, the same day the House of Representatives originally intended to vote on the bill. According to the analysis, the deficit savings reduced from $337 billion to $150 billion.
The analysis also showed that the revised bill would not fix the 15 to 20 percent increase in premiums in 2018 and 2019 estimated in the CBO score of the first bill.
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It’s increasingly looking like the analysis CBO released Thursday won’t be the final score of the bill, which is currently still in negotiations. Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump met with the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative faction of House Republicans, which has vowed to sink the bill in a House vote if it is not changed, and with the Tuesday Group — a contingent of more moderate Republicans increasingly wary of the rightward push. House leadership and the White House are desperately trying to find a balance that will gain voters on the right without losing them on the left of the caucus.
If that sounds like a Catch-22, it’s because it is — and a CBO report that shows even less deficit savings isn’t going to provide a solution.
Read the full report released by CBO below.
