The most recent version of the Senate Republican bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare would result in 22 million additional people without insurance over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported Thursday.
The number of uninsured is essentially unchanged from the original draft of the legislation released last month.
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A Health and Human Services analysis of Sen. Ted Cruz’s proposal to let insurers sell plans that don’t comply with Obamacare regulations appears to back up the Texas Republican’s claim that the idea would lower premiums across the individual insurance market. The analysis purports that the amendment offered to the Senate’s Obamacare repeal bill would slash premiums for certain Obamacare enrollees by 2020, and save even more for consumers who opt for cheaper, no frills products. HHS also found the amendment would boost enrollment by as much as as 16.1 million people by 2024, more than the nearly 14 million topline projected under Obamacare.
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How do we fix health care? The conservative policy world has offered a number of ideas, but elected Republicans have failed to coalesce around any particular strategy. J.D. Vance argues that this is because they’re unable to accept that the government must play a role in paying to solve this problem. This is where the Republican Party hits an ideological barrier that it simply must power through before meaningful reform can happen. Yes, solving problems can be expensive, and yes, that money always comes from taxpayers. Devising a vision is impossible when we refuse to accept that the government bears some financial responsibility in solving a problem it helped create.
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Senate Republicans, scrambling to win support for their health-care bill, pushed a measure Thursday that they said could ease the impact of the bill’s Medicaid cuts on low-income people.
Advocating for the new direction is a little-known health official who is now at the center of the health-care fight: Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the two federal medical programs.
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