Health care coverage is vital for Americans from all walks of life. With comprehensive health care coverage, people are equipped to manage their day-to-day health matters – such as staying connected with their primary care providers, accessing important preventive services with no cost sharing and filling prescriptions. Coverage provides peace of mind and financial security when people experience serious illnesses or injuries, treatment for which can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That’s why it is so concerning that preliminary CBO estimates show that the current version of budget legislation passed by the U.S. House would result in loss of coverage for at least 10.7 million people who are enrolled in Medicaid and the individual market. For example, unlike workers who have employer coverage and seniors in Medicare, people in the individual market would no longer be able to auto re-enroll in their existing coverage.
Coverage loss would be compounded if the health care tax credits currently in place are allowed to expire at the end of the year. Estimates show that expiration of the tax credits would result in an additional 4.2 million people losing coverage, while millions more would see substantial premium increases.
Taken together, all of this means approximately 15 million Americans would lose their health insurance in the coming years. Coverage losses of this magnitude would be unprecedented for our country.
Disruption in the individual market could also result in much higher premiums for those who do remain in coverage because the risk pool will meaningfully erode. If barriers are erected to enrollment, tax credits expire and premiums soar, only the sickest enrollees will stay in the market. That would likely take us back to an unstable individual market, with minimal choice and competition and people in rural counties having no options at all. Soaring rates of uninsurance in rural communities will also destabilize rural providers, many of whom already struggle to keep their practices and facilities open.
Loss of coverage will also meaningfully set back the nascent and long-overdue efforts to fundamentally address chronic illness in the U.S. because stable coverage is essential to accessing preventive care and for managing chronic illness. If millions lose their health insurance, emerging conditions that could have been contained will progress and be diagnosed later, treated later and at much higher costs.
We all want a healthier America. Deep reductions in health care coverage would be a big step in the wrong direction away from that goal.
While policymakers crafting budget legislation face difficult choices balancing numerous competing priorities, there can be no debate that maintaining affordable health insurance is a top priority for American families. As the budget reconciliation process continues, Congress should support low-income people and working families by keeping coverage stable and access to care affordable.