Sanders calls GOP healthcare bill a ‘disgrace’ after CBO score

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) gave a succinct review of the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) new score for the House-passed Republican health care bill.

“What a disgrace,” he tweeted Wednesday afternoon, minutes after the nonpartisan agency announced that the measure would leave 23 million more Americans uninsured. 

What a disgrace.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 24, 2017

The new projections fell largely in line with projections for the first iteration of the bill, which was scored in March. But Republicans and Democrats had been awaiting Wednesday’s analysis for the amended bill, which the House decided to vote on before the CBO finished its report. 

Democrats have hammered Republicans over the American Health Care Act (AHCA), and Wednesday’s report fanned the flames of their criticism.

On top of the number of Americans losing insurance, which is a million lower in the second iteration of the bill than the first, Democrats are also lamenting that the bill allows insurers charge people with pre-existing conditions more, which the CBO said could lead to premiums so high that people lose their care. 

The report also found that the bill would decrease the deficit by $119 billion over 10 years, which is less deficit reduction than the bill’s first score offered. 

The AHCA passed the House and is now being worked on by the Senate, where many Republicans have pronounced it dead-on-arrival and are instead working on their own health care bill to send back to the House.