If the Obamacare law is repealed without any replacement, insurance premiums would skyrocket for millions and another 18 million Americans would be left without any insurance coverage in just one year according to Congress' budget analysis. The report immediately became a flashing hazard light for this year's effort by GOP lawmakers and President-elect Donald Trump to take out Obama's law and to institute their own alternative.
Republicans have failed to unite under one plan. GOP leaders and Trump have offered clashing descriptions of shared goal so a successful outcome is hardly guaranteed. The evaluation came from a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office which was joined by Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation. They analyzed a Republican written bill which was vetoed by Obama last January. The bill would have erased major portions of the overhaul. Included are tax penalties for people who failed to buy insurance and for larger companies that failed to cover workers, expansion of Medicaid coverage for low income people and federal subsidies to help consumers buy policies on online marketplaces.
Under such measure, the report stated that premiums for individual policies would swell up to 25 percent the first year of enactment and will double by 2026. Uninsured individuals will swell to 32 million over the decade. The Republicans however stated that there is a big difference between the 2016 bill and this year's plan. Donald Stewart, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell R-Ky said that the report assumes a situation that simply does not exist and no one in Congress advocates according to an article by the Boston Herald.
Most Americans get health insurance through an employer and the report does not address this. The main focus of the Affordable Care Act was to get health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not have it. To achieve this, a new non-group market was created and Medicaid was expanded. Each state had to have its own individual mix of insurance companies and policies. To help people obtain insurance, federal subsidies were offered by the law to help people pay their premiums. These subsidies will be taken away by the repeal and the market could collapse according to an article by NBC News.
