WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the Republican plan for health care (all times local):
10: 25 a.m.
The Senate’s top Democrat says a new nonpartisan analysis of the Republican health care bill endorsed by President Donald Trump should be a “knockout blow” to the effort to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act.
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York also says that the Congressional Budget Office Report issued Monday proves that “Trumpcare would be a nightmare for the American people.”
The CBO report found that 14 million people would lose health insurance next year, rising to 24 million after 10 years.
The analysis is giving more pragmatic Republicans pause, and the current measure appears unlikely to pass through Congress in its current form.
Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi said the GOP measure is “very, very cruel. It must be stopped.”
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9:25 a.m.
Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, a member of the Freedom Caucus, says he and other conservatives have been working with the White House on changes to the Republican health care plan.
Jordan tells Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that those changes will be proposed when the House debates the legislation, likely next week. He said “We have been working with the White House all along.”
Jordan and other budget hawks have balked at the GOP bill as not going far enough, labeling it “Obamacare Lite” and complaining that GOP leadership is preventing them from trying to change the bill before it reaches the House floor.
Jordan said: “This bill doesn’t unite Republicans. This bill doesn’t bring down the cost of premiums.”
He added: “I don’t think it’s going to accomplish what we told the voters we were going to do.”
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8:15 a.m.
White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney says he doesn’t trust the Congressional Budget Office’s prediction that 14 million Americans will lose health care insurance in the next year under the Republican plan.
In interviews Tuesday on MSNBC and Fox News “Fox & Friends,” Mulvaney noted that the CBO was wrong in estimating coverage under former President Barack Obama’s plan. Mulvaney said the office is wrong now too.
He said, “I don’t believe the facts are correct.” Mulvaney said the CBO is “really good at counting numbers but maybe not that good about counting coverage.”
CBO had predicted 23 million people would enroll in online marketplaces when Obama’s law was enacted but the actual number was 12 million, largely because it overestimated how the individual mandate would prompt people to buy coverage.
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8:15 a.m.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, says the Republican health care plan could be “devastating” to state budgets.
Cuomo told MSNBC on Tuesday that he is concerned about the plan to dramatically reduce Medicaid funding. CBO says the plan would reduce budget deficits by $337 billion over a decade. The largest savings would come from reductions for Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for low-income Americans, and elimination of Obama’s subsidies for individuals buying coverage.
Cuomo says he’s heard “rumors” that the GOP plan could cut as much as $3 billion for a state like New York. He says, “I can’t make up $3 billion dollars. It would wreak havoc on the state.”
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3:45 a.m.
Critics of GOP health care legislation have gotten fresh ammunition from a report that says the bill would increase the ranks of the uninsured by 14 million people next year alone, and 24 million over a decade.
The findings from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could make prospects for the legislation backed by President Donald Trump even tougher, with a few House and Senate conservatives already in open revolt and moderate Republicans queasy about big cuts to the Medicaid safety net for the poor.
But the bill’s supporters at the White House and Capitol Hill show no sign of retreat. Instead, they are attacking the parts of the CBO report they didn’t like while touting the more favorable findings, including smaller deficits from their bill and lower premiums over time.
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