Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price dismissed the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis on Monday, which projected an overall increase in the number of uninsured Americans under the Obamacare replacement plan released by Republicans.
“We believe that the plan that we’re putting in place will insure more individuals than [are] currently insured,” Price told reporters outside the West Wing.
“So, we think that the CBO simply has it wrong,” he added. “It’s just not believable, is what we would suggest.”
The much-anticipated analysis projected that the number of individuals without health insurance increase by 14 million in 2018 and rise to 52 million in 2026, more than double the figure attached to the current healthcare law.
Defenders of the GOP replacement bill preempted by CBO report by arguing that more Americans wouldn’t have health insurance because the government would no longer be mandating them to purchase it.
Price said the Trump-backed legislation would allow Americans to “buy a coverage policy that they want for themselves and their family,” while highlighting a portion of the report that said insurance premiums would drop by 10 percent on average.
He later issued a statement that said the numbers “defy logic.” He said to reach the 14 million, about 5 million people would have to leave Medicaid, which pays for most of their insurance and another 9 million would leave the individual and employer markets.
“These types of assumptions do not translate to the real world, and they do not accurately estimate the effects of this bill,” the statement said.
Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney also rejected the CBO report, particularly a section that suggested that fewer seniors would get coverage under the new law.
“Apparently what CBO looked at was simply the bill pending before Congress. It did not look at the regulatory reforms or state innovation grants or the flexibility we’ll allow the states,” Mulvaney said. “It didn’t look at all the other pieces of legislation that are pending out there that we call from our friends on the other side of the aisle to help us reform the insurance market to provide for greater competition.”
Both Cabinet officials and House Speaker Paul Ryan were quick to point to one part of the CBO report that found that their bill would cut the federal deficit by $337 billion over the 2017-2016 period by eliminating the costs of Medicaid expansion and federal healthcare subsidies.
