From the June 9, 2017 ACP Advocate
House-passed bill would be ‘terrible for patients,’ College leader says.
The health care legislation passed by the House of Representatives to replace the Affordable Care Act would cause 23 million people to lose their insurance coverage over the next decade, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That's a number that the ܼˮ̳ hopes will give the U.S. Senate pause as it considers a repeal-and-replacement bill of its own.
“The [CBO] report confirms all our fears about the devastating impact that the American Health Care Act would have on patient care,” said Bob Doherty, ACP's senior vice president for governmental affairs and public policy.
In the wake of the CBO's analysis, released in late May, ACP continues to lobby the Senate to scrap the House-approved Republican plan and start over.
“Congress should move away from the fundamentally flawed and harmful policies that would result from the American Health Care Act as passed by the House,” said Dr. Jack Ende, ACP's president. “We urge the Senate to reject this legislation.”
The CBO's much-anticipated report came out in late May, after the House had already approved its plan to dismantle the ACA. The CBO had issued a similar analysis in March, but the House made changes to the bill that the CBO had analyzed and subsequently passed it without CBO review.
By contrast, Senate rules require the CBO to weigh in before senators can vote on the measure.
The CBO estimates that 51 million people younger than 65 would be uninsured in 2026 if the House-passed measure were to become law. That's 23 million people more than the 28 million currently uninsured.
Read the full article in ACP Advocate.
The ACP Advocate is a bi-weekly e-newsletter that provides ACP members with news about public policy issues affecting internal medicine and patient care.