Here’s what the Congressional Budget Office says about the Obamacare replacement plan
![President Donald Trump listens to participants during a meeting on healthcare in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, March 13, 2017. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)](https://thumb.spokesman.com/uO6q6eDqVn9RLDznlEJuDvMVKgE=/600x0/media.spokesman.com/graphics/2018/07/sr-loader.png)
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act on Monday.
The gist? Millions of people would no longer have insurance. The federal deficit would decrease. And premiums will rise for about three years before falling.
Insurance coverage
The report estimates 14 million additional people would be uninsured by 2018, and 24 million by 2026.
The initial drop will likely come from two groups. The first are people who only bought insurance to avoid paying a penalty under Obamacare, which required everyone to have health insurance.
The second are people who can no longer afford insurance under the GOP plan, due to increased premiums (more on that in a second).
The law keeps the Medicaid expansion in place until 2020, so more people would lose insurance after that part of the law goes into effect.
States will likely cut back Medicaid spending in response to lower federal funding. Some states that expanded Medicaid eligibility under Obamacare would roll back the expansion, leaving people uninsured.
By 2026, a total of 52 million Americans would be without health insurance, the report says. Under current law, the office estimated 28 million Americans would be uninsured in 2026.
The deficit
Over the next decade, the new law would reduce the federal deficit by $337 billion, mostly because of reductions in Medicaid spending and spending on individual insurance subsidies.
That would yield a $1.2 trillion reduction in spending. The federal government would also lose $0.9 trillion in revenue, mostly from lost taxes and fees imposed on health insurers and the hospital insurance payroll tax.
Premiums
Average premiums would increase before 2020 and then decrease by 2026 to be roughly 10 percent lower than under current law.
But those changes will vary widely depending on age, because the new law would allow insurers to charge older enrollees five times as much for insurance as younger people. Right now, they can only charge older Americans three times as much.
The effect would be a premium reduction for younger people and an substantial increase for older people.
Read more
Here’s how both parties reacted to the report.
And if you need a crash course on the proposed health care law itself, here’s one from Vox and one from The Hill.