The worse-than-expected healthcare analysis released Monday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has Republicans on the defensive, the White House dodging campaign promises, and the resistance movement reenergized to fight back.
According to the CBO, the GOP’s healthcare plan would cause 24 million Americans to lose health coverage over the next 10 years, raise premiums for millions more, and afford a massive tax cut to the rich.
“The plan, the CBO concludes, would take more than $1 trillion away from programs targeting poor and middle-class families, to fund an $883 billion tax cut targeted at the wealthy,” Dylan Matthews wrote at Vox. “It is upward income redistribution of a truly massive scale.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) tried to put a positive spin on the CBO’s “devastating” report even as interest groups, Senate Republicans, and right-wing conservatives voiced increasing skepticism over the American Healthcare Act (AHCA), recently dubbed “TrumpCare.”
The Hill reported:
However, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained:
Many others will go without coverage due to sweeping cuts to Medicaid. President Donald Trump vowed multiple times on the campaign trail not to cut the program, but the CBO analysis shows AHCA would see Trump “break his promise—by a mile,” as NBC News put it. TrumpCare would slash $880 billion in federal funds from Medicaid in the next 10 years, leaving 14 million fewer people without coverage by 2026.
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