Republicans are bracing for a brutal CBO report on their ObamaCare replacement proposal


Aides to President Trump on Sunday questioned the credibility of the Congressional Budget Office as Republicans braced for the nonpartisan agency to issue a report concluding that the House Republican plan to replace ObamaCare will leave fewer Americans with health insurance. The CBO is expected to issue its estimate of the cost and other implications of the proposed legislation as soon as Monday, but White House budget director Mick Mulvaney and White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said the CBO should focus on health care affordability rather than the number of insured.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said Sunday that he fully expects the CBO analysis to say the ranks of the uninsured would grow under the proposal, which would eliminate the requirement to buy insurance. His statement contradicted Trump's promise to replace ObamaCare with a plan offering "insurance for everybody."
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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