This additional analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the longer-term effects of the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act on Medicaid, beyond the 10 years projections in its original analysis of the bill. If the Senate bill is enacted, the CBO estimates that while there would be a 26% reduction in federal Medicaid by the year 2026, there would be a deeper 35% reduction ten years later, by the year 2036. Under the Senate bill, the estimated reductions in Medicaid already would be $772 billion during the first ten years.
This would mean a cost shift of tens of billions of dollars to state governments, health care providers, and Medicaid beneficiaries themselves, who would have to make up those costs to try to maintain current levels of Medicaid health insurance coverage. This would likely mean drastic reductions in enrollment, amount of health care benefits provided, and levels of payments to health care providers. Millions of current Medicaid beneficiaries would lose their health insurance, and the remaining would be responsible for billions of dollars of out-of-pocket expenses, much of which will be unaffordable, forcing many of them also to lose their insurance and become uninsured.
Ignatius Bau 