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Twenty-Four Million Fewer Americans Will Be Insured Under GOP Healthcare Plan, Report Says

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates 14 million fewer Americans would have healthcare in 2018, compared to the status quo, and that 24 million fewer people would have it in the year 2026.
Photo via Flickr user Tony Alter

After evaluating the Republicans' healthcare replacement plan that pretty much everyone already hates, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its official report estimating that 14 million people will lose health insurance next year if the bill were to go into effect, as VICE News reports.

The cadre of government independent economists and analysts also estimated that 52 million people will be uninsured in 2026 under the replacement bill, despite President Trump and the House GOP website promising that no one will be losing his or her health insurance under their plan and that all citizens would be included.

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"I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not," Trump said in a 60 Minutes interview in September. "Everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now."

During the campaign, Trump also promised that his plan would be "a lot less expensive," harping on high premiums under Obamacare. But according to the CBO, premiums would actually go up under the new American Health Care Act, 15 to 20 percent higher than they would be under Obamacare. It wouldn't be until 2026, when an estimated 24 million fewer people have insurance than under current law, that the premiums would dip 10 percent lower than they are projected to be now.

The plan would also shave $337 billion off the federal deficit over the next ten years, according to the CBO's estimate, which is only a small fraction of the estimated total GDP over the next decade—an estimated $230 trillion.

The White House took care to distance itself from the CBO report, traditionally seen as the impartial test of a law's financial impact, before the numbers even came out Monday.

"If you're looking to the CBO for accuracy, you're looking in the wrong place," press secretary Sean Spicer said last week.