Donald Trump’s healthcare plan would come with a pretty steep price tag both in terms of dollars spent and a rise in the number of uninsured people, according to a new analysis of the GOP frontrunner’s plan.
Trump’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare would cost nearly $500 billion over a decade, though that gets reduced to $270 billion when taking into account economic growth.
The plan would also nearly double the number of uninsured people, causing nearly 21 million people to lose coverage, according to the analysis from the bipartisan think tank Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
A cost-saver in Trump’s plan is a policy to let people import drugs from overseas and allow people to purchase insurance across state lines. Reimportation, which is buying a drug manufactured in the U.S. from an overseas supplier, would save $20 billion in costs over 10 years, and purchasing insurance across state lines would save $10 billion.
But another part of Trump’s plan would create a deduction for insurance premiums for those who buy insurance on the individual market, which mainly comprises of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges. Such a move would add $100 billion to the deficit, the analysis found.
The analysis doesn’t include Trump’s call for Medicare to negotiate with drug makers for lower prices, something currently forbidden under federal law.
Trump previously claimed this provision will save $300 billion a year in healthcare costs. The committee found that claim to be false as Medicare only spends $111 billion a year on prescription drugs.
“Based on previous estimates by [Congressional Budget Office], actual savings would likely be small or negligible,” the analysis said.
The analysis also looked at the impact on insurance coverage. Currently about 27 million will lack health insurance in 2018, according to the CBO.
Repealing Obamacare would increase that number by 22 million, while Trump’s plan would only increase coverage by 1.1 million, the analysis noted.
