The Latest CBO Score Of The Better Care Reconciliation Act Leaves 22 Million Uninsured by 2026

On July 20, 2017, the Senate Budget committee released the latest version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (summary), which was sent to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for scoring. It is basically identical to the second BCRA draft posted on July 13, 2017 (which was not separately scored by the CBO) except that it drops the Cruz amendment and includes a couple of small changes in the Medicaid section. The July 13 draft added $70 billion in state long-term stabilization funding to the original BCRA which the Cruz amendment then shifted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to pay to insurers that offered Affordable Care Act compliant plans. By dropping the Cruz amendment, the July 20 draft leaves these funds with the states, and thus increases state long-term stabilization funding by that amount over the July 13 draft. Minutes later on July 20, 2017, the CBO released an analysis of the July 20 BCRA version, as did the Joint Committee on Taxation. The biggest change in their analysis from their first BCRA score, which analyzed the original June 22 version, is that the July 20 version would reduce the federal budget deficit by $483 billion over ten years compared to the $321 billion deficit reduction in the original June 22 BCRA. The biggest reason for the change in the deficit score is that the July 20 version drops provisions of the original BCRA repealing the ACA’s Medicare payroll tax surcharge and unearned income taxes on high wage earners, which...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Following the ACA Insurance and Coverage ACA repeal and replace BCRA Source Type: blogs