Why Health-Care Hurdles in Washington Will Cheer Wall Street

The group said the number of uninsured would jump to 24 million by 2026. NPR’s Scott Horsley joins me now in the studio. The GOP’s plan would put a per-person cap on what the federal government would give states like North Carolina. What are they saying? Some of that would be voluntary.

The newspaper said among those hit the hardest under the proposed replacement would be 60-year-olds with annual incomes of $30,000, particularly in rural areas where healthcare costs are higher and Obamacare subsidies are greater.

“If Donald Trump and Paul Ryan’s “health care” plan is adopted, thousands of Americans will die”, Sanders tweeted.

While the number of uninsured Americans would immediately climb, the trajectory for premiums is more complicated. “This is it. If we don’t get this through, the goal of repealing Obamacare and instituting a system that will be patient-centered is going to be unbelievably hard”. And that’s kind of obvious.

-Individual mandate penalty gone: The penalty on people who don’t buy insurance is gone.

But overall, a big chunk of that increase in the uninsured comes from Medicaid, as the Republican bill rolls back the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.

CORNISH: Now, what about the cost of insurance itself?

This means that younger generations who begin entering the insurance market after 2020 will face lower premiums.

Monday’s CBO report stirred fresh doubts about whether the legislation is capable of passing, with a possible House vote taking place next week. And after promises by the Trump Administration that ‘nobody will be worse off financially, ‘ CBO estimates that premiums – for those who still have coverage – will go up by 15-20 percent. Premiums will be lower.

Late last night, POLITICO reports that a study from the White House, performed by the Office of Management and Budget, projects an even bleaker outcome. When he left, people liked him. “It’s the only way you can get to these freaky numbers”. What’s going on here?

Sanders, a staunch advocate for universal health care, has spent much of the year on a red-state tour through regions where the Obamacare repeal is set to hurt people the most. “They get better with care”, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, said Tuesday on MSNBC. The Affordable Care Act now specifically seeks to limit these plans as much as possible because they sometimes slammed customers with sky-high deductibles and co-pays. So this is tricky business, Audie, and the CBO concedes there is considerable uncertainty around these predictions.

But Spicer called the CBO “consistently wrong” about predicting health-care coverage figures. What’s going on there? Without it, the CBO predicted, insurance companies would have no choice but to raise premiums in the near term.

Schumer and other Democrats have been making a concerted effort to tie President Trump to the pitfalls of AHCA, by branding the Republican Obamacare replacement bill as “Trumpcare”. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office laid out its assessment: not so pretty.

CORNISH: That’s NPR’s Scott Horsley.