The Congressional Budget Office announced Thursday that it would soon issue a score for the Obamacare repeal and replace bill that is being debated by Senate Republicans.
The score, conducted with the Joint Committee on Taxation, will make projections about how money much the bill would save the federal government and how many people could be uninsured if it were to become law. The CBO did not specify when the report would be released.
The bill being evaluated is formally known as the Better Care Reconciliation Act, and would undo Obamacare’s employer and individual mandate and change the structure of Obamacare so that people receive tax credits for private insurance. It would roll back Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and change the way that states receive federal funding for the program to a fixed amount rather than a matched amount that changes every year.
Over the long term, it would cut the rate of growth on Medicaid spending to match economic inflation rather than medical inflation.
A former score of the bill, before its most recent changes of added funding for opioid addiction treatment and additional state stabilization funds, projected that uninsurance numbers would rise by 22 million by 2026.
Several senators are waiting to see the score to determine whether they will support the bill. As it stands now, however, it does not have enough support to proceed to debate.
The score will not include an analysis of an amendment advanced by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, which would allow insurers to sell plans with fewer medical provisions as long as they offer one plan that meets the full range of consumer protections offered under Obamacare.
