Over at The Upshot, Margot Sanger-Katz catches something that any of us might have noticed if we’d had keen enough eyes. The CBO famously projected that the Republican health care bill would result in 24 million people losing health insurance:
But one piece of context has gone little noticed: The Republican bill would actually result in more people being uninsured than if Obamacare were simply repealed. Getting rid of the major coverage provisions and regulations of Obamacare would cost 23 million Americans their health insurance, according to another recent C.B.O. report. In other words, 1 million more Americans would have health insurance with a clean repeal than with the Republican replacement plan, according to C.B.O. estimates.
Here’s what the CBO said in its January report. If only the individual mandate, the subsidies, and the Medicaid expansion are repealed, 32 million people will lose insurance by 2026. If, in addition, community rating, minimum coverage requirements, and the preexisting conditions ban are repealed—in other words, if essentially all of Obamacare is repealed and nothing put in its place—23 million people will lose insurance by 2026.
As it happens, the current Republican bill is similar to Option 1, which means the GOP is making progress. Under their old bill 32 million people would be kicked off the insurance rolls, while the new bill only kicks off 24 million. However, they could do even better by just repealing everything, full stop.
Their problem, of course, is that they can’t do that. Democrats can filibuster all the additional stuff in Option 2. Nevertheless, Sanger-Katz is right: it’s pretty remarkable that the Republican bill actually does more damage than repealing Obamacare and simply doing nothing at all. Not just any political party can pull off something like that.
