Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Tuesday called the House bill to repeal and replace Obamacare “outdated” when asked about how the bill would affect coverage rates.
“What’s more important is what the Senate comes up with and looking at that and the estimates for that,” she said, speaking in a USA Today interview that was livestreamed. “Really the House version something that is outdated at this point.”
Verma was responding to a question about the findings from a Congressional Budget Office report that projected 23 million more people would be uninsured under the House bill to repeal Obamacare, called the American Health Care Act. She said she was working with the Senate to “make sure some of the president’s core principles are incorporated into the final version.” Jane Norris, director of communications for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in an email that Verma “was pointing out that through the reconciliation process, the Senate is drafting changes to the House bill that meets the goals of the House and Administration to repeal and replace Obamacare.”
During the interview, Verma initially raised questions about CBO’s ability to accurately score the bill, pointing to discrepancies in the projections it made about how many people would be covered by the Obamacare exchanges. Roughly 10 million people are covered, though an earlier CBO report had projected twice that number. The final tally is a result of fewer young, healthy people signing up for the exchanges than anticipated, and others choosing to buy coverage off the exchange. CBO also had projected that roughly 6 million people would move from employer plans to exchange plans.
“We disagree with some of the premises that they are indicating in this report,” Verma said of the latest CBO score.
