AP Photo/Jared Wickerham
U.S. Senator Pat Toomey
The Congressional Budget Office released its analysis for the Senate Republican healthcare bill on Monday, and it appears to dispel a major Republican talking point about the bill's relationship to Medicaid.Since Senate Republicans released their healthcare bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, on Thursday, the Trump administration and Senate Republicans have argued that the bill would not make cuts to the government-run healthcare program.
Medicaid is a federal program that provides insurance primarily to pregnant women, single mothers, people with disabilities, and seniors with low incomes.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the law better known as Obamacare, Medicaid was expanded to those earning 138% of the federal poverty limit in states choosing to participate. Previously, the line was drawn at 100%.
"I have to strongly disagree with the characterization that we are somehow ending the Medicaid expansion. In fact, quite the contrary. The Senate bill will codify and make permanent the Medicaid expansion, and in fact we'll have the federal government pay the lion share of the cost," Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania told Face The Nation on Sunday.
Despite Toomey's statement, the BCRA phases out the Medicaid expansion over several years beginning in 2021, with the idea that those who fall out of Medicaid eligibility will access coverage through the individual insurance market.
The CBO threw cold water on both the talking point that the BCRA doesn't end the expansion or cut Medicaid funding.
The CBO's analysis found that 22 million fewer people would have insurance under the bill by 2026. Cuts to Medicaid would reach $772 billion by 2026.