Ominous Conclusions From The CBO Analysis Of The GOP Health Plan: ‘Fatal Flaws,’ ‘A Train Wreck’

The Washington Post: The CBO Report Proves The GOP Health-Care Bill Is No Rescue Plan
Republicans sold the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the Obamacare repeal-and-replace plan that the House passed last month, with a number of untruths, chief among them that Obamacare is collapsing and the GOP effort is nothing short of a rescue plan. The Congressional Budget Office, Congress’s official scorekeeper, found Wednesday that the Republicans’ bill is no such thing. Not only would it result in 23 million more people lacking health insurance in a decade, but it would destabilize some states’ individual health-care insurance markets for all but relatively healthy people. (5/24)

The New York Times: C.B.O. Report Reveals Trumpcare’s Fatal Flaws
The Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the House health care bill is a devastating indictment.The new report shows that millions of Americans would lose health insurance and the quality of insurance for millions more would deteriorate. The savings from that carnage — to borrow a favorite word of President Trump’s — would pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. (David Leonhardt, 5/24)

The New York Times: Republicans, Get Ready For The Trumpcare Headlines
In promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, many Republicans cited headlines from last year such as “Obamacare Premiums to Soar 22 Percent” and “As Obamacare Choices Dwindle, Feds Face Consumer, Political Backlash.” Yet based on a new analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, headlines would be even worse under the health care bill to repeal Obamacare, which was passed by the House this month. (Jeanne Lambrew, 5/24)

Los Angeles Times: CBO On GOP Obamacare Repeal: Still A Train Wreck
The Congressional Budget Office has spoken: The Obamacare repeal bill passed by the House GOP earlier this month could destroy the individual insurance markets in states where one-sixth of the population resides. It would cost 23 million people their insurance coverage within 10 years. And in many states it would be terrible for any but the most healthy Americans. That’s the CBO’s score of the latest version of the House bill, which only passed after it was amended to allow individual states to eviscerate consumer protections written into the Affordable Care Act. The CBO’s bottom line is that the bill is still a train wreck that will cost millions of Americans their coverage and sharply raise costs for millions more. (Michael Hiltzik, 5/24)

The New York Times: C.B.O. Has Clear Message About Losers In House Health Bill
The Senate now has a clearer sense of who would win and lose under the health bill the House sent them. It also got a startlingly direct message from government analysts about how destabilizing one of the House ideas could be. The Congressional Budget Office published its assessment of the House health bill on Wednesday, and warned that a last-minute amendment made to win conservative votes would result in deeply dysfunctional markets for about a sixth of the population. In those places, insurance would fail to cover important medical services, and people with pre-existing illnesses could be shut out of coverage, the budget office said. (Margot Sanger-Katz, 5/24)

The Washington Post: The CBO Confirms: The Republican Health-Care Bill Is Rotten Legislation
When the Congressional Budget Office finally released its scoring of the American Health Care Act, it seemed anti-climactic, if not irrelevant. The Senate is not bothering to take up the AHCA at all. The CBO score, to the delight of Democrats, does remind us how counterproductive is the GOP House bill, which every member will have to defend in 2018. (Jennifer Rubin, 5/24)

Huffington Post: 23 Million Fewer People Would Have Coverage Under Obamacare Repeal Bill, CBO Confirms
[T]he reasons why health insurance would be less expensive for some aren’t much to cheer about, the budget report makes clear. Prices would come down for healthy people because those who are sick or have illness in their medical histories would have less access to coverage ― and the policies available on the market would tend to be a lot less comprehensive. In other words, the price for lower premiums would be some combination of higher out-of-pocket costs, fewer covered services, and coverage that would be harder to get for the people who need it most. (Jonathan Cohn and Jeffrey Young, 5/24)

RealClear Health: CBO And America's AHCA Headache
The much-anticipated Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the GOP’s effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA) released yesterday, indicates that the bill would cause 23 million people to become uninsured while reducing the federal deficit by $119 billion. In that sense, there is little change from their assessment of the original version of AHCA. (Billy Wynne, 5/25)

USA Today: Republican Health Care Bill Indicted, Again
Now we know why House Republicans were so quick to ram through an Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill last month, not waiting for an estimate of its impact or holding any public hearings. On Wednesday the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office got around to “scoring” the bill, and the results are not pretty. By next year, 14 million fewer people would have health insurance. Within a decade, 23 million fewer people would be covered. (5/24)

USA Today: Republican Health Care Bill Fails The Jimmy Kimmel Test. Again.
Every so often a “national moment” takes us out of our day-to-day and helps shape our national thinking. The Exxon Valdez oil spill helped forge our national opinion about environmental responsibility. Terry Schiavo’s life-support case made the public contemplate a dignified death. Someday, when we look back on the current health care debate, we may see how a national moment helped us articulate a new consensus when late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel told the poignant story of the birth of his son Billy. (Andy Slavitt, 5/24)

Los Angeles Times: Trumpcare Will Make It Even Harder For Millions Of California's Kids To Graduate And Get Jobs
he latest report from the Congressional Budget Office once again exposes the sharp and bitter truth about the House Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The American Health Care Act — now in the hands of the Senate — represents a glaring transfer of wealth, security and opportunity from low-income to high-income individuals. Should the AHCA or anything close to it become law, the students we serve in the California State University system and California Community Colleges system will be among the hardest hit. (Zelman Epstein, 5/24)

Modern Healthcare: An Extremist Attack On Public Health
Anyone who knows anything about healthcare didn't need a Congressional Budget Office scorecard to understand the disastrous consequences of the American Health Care Act. That legislation, now before the Senate, passed the House in early May in a straight party-line vote without hearings or a CBO score. Now we know the score. 23 million would lose their health insurance over the next decade, including 14 million by the end of next year. (Merrill Goozner, 5/24)