The CBO Scored The GOP's New Plan & It's Not Much Better Than Its Past Predictions

The agency that predicted repealing Obamacare would leave an additional 32 million people without insurance has a new prediction for the GOP's new plan. Having failed to pass a repeal and replace health care bill as well as having failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act entirely, Senate Republicans are looking at a skinny repeal, which would dismantle the ACA piece by piece. And the CBO score for the skinny repeal shows that it would also leave millions of Americans without health insurance.

According to the CBO, about 16 million more people would become uninsured by 2026 under the GOP's "skinny repeal" strategy. While this is considerably better than the other options — the House's American Health Care Act (AHCA) was estimated to leave 23 million uninsured, while the Senate's Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) would have left 22 million without coverage — passing a skinny repeal would still leave millions of Americans wondering where they go from here.

Under a skinny repeal, the Senate would vote on amendments that would strip Obamacare of several of its core requirements. Those rules that could be undone include the mandate requiring individuals to purchase insurance plans and the mandate requiring employers with more than 50 employees to offer insurance.

The CBO estimates that a skinny repeal would also increase premiums by approximately 20 percent. A premium is the amount you (or your employer) pays for your insurance policy. According to the Center for American Progress, the 20 percent estimation means the average premium next year could be $1,238 higher than it would have been under Obamacare as it is currently in effect.

The skinny repeal, which has been called a "watered-down" or "scaled-down" version of a full Obamacare repeal, is not guaranteed to succeed, though it is more promising for Republicans hoping to get something, anything, passed through the Senate. Along with eliminating the two mandates, the skinny repeal would also seek to get rid of the tax that is placed on medical device manufacturers.

Republicans have been trying and failing to repeal Obamacare for ages. Whether the attempt to slowly chip away at it will work is unknown, but as the CBO score shows, a skinny repeal certainly won't lead to more Americans getting health insurance.