Health Care

CBO: ObamaCare repeal without replace would cost 32 million insurance

by Nathaniel Weixel 07/19/17 05:30 PM ET

Repealing ObamaCare without a replacement would result in 32 million people losing their insurance in the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The bill, much of which would take effect in 2020, would also massively increase insurance premiums. According to the CBO, average premiums would increase by about 25 percent in 2018 alone. The increase would reach about 50 percent in 2020, and premiums would increase nearly 100 percent by 2026, CBO said.

Senate Republicans said this week they would consider voting on repeal only, after it appeared their replacement legislation had failed. However, negotiations attempting to revive repeal and replace continue and senators are scheduled to huddle Wednesday night to discuss if there’s a path forward.

The unfavorable score of the repeal-only bill could help jumpstart discussions about returning to the repeal-and-replace legislation.

A previous CBO score of the Senate’s repeal-and-replace bill estimated that 22 million people would lose insurance over the next decade.

The CBO hasn’t released a score on the most recent revision, which includes a controversial amendment from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

The Senate will vote next week on a motion to proceed, though it’s not clear which bill Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants to move to — a straight repeal or the repeal-and-replace legislation that seemed dead just days ago.

Both the House and Senate passed the “repeal-only” bill in 2015 that was vetoed by President Obama. Among other provisions, the “repeal only” bill would eliminate: ObamaCare’s individual and employer mandates, the Medicaid expansion, and subsidies for low-income individuals.

It would retain the requirements that protect people with pre-existing conditions from discrimination and would continue to require insurers to offer specific benefits.

According to the CBO “eliminating the penalty associated with the individual mandate and the subsidies for insurance while retaining the market regulations would destabilize the nongroup market, and the effect would worsen over time.”

Republicans have argued that they need to repeal and replace ObamaCare to “rescue” the growing number of people who live in counties with no insurers on the healthcare exchanges. But according to the CBO, repeal-only would make the problem worse.

The repeal-only bill would cause insurers to begin dropping out of the marketplace as soon as next year, the CBO said. It would also leave about half of the nation’s population without any ObamaCare insurers by 2020, a figure that would increase to about three-quarters of the population by 2026.