GOP leaders scramble to shore up support for health bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House and Republican leaders in Congress scrambled today to shore up support for their health-care bill as critics went on the attack over new estimates that 14 million people would lose insurance coverage in the first year alone.

The findings from the Congressional Budget Office handed fresh ammunition to Democratic opponents of the GOP drive to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's health care law.

The new figures, which estimated that 24 million people would lose insurance over a decade, also appeared to strengthen pockets of conservative resistance to the bill and rattle nerves among rank-and-file Republicans.

With Washington blanketed in a rare March snow, congressional GOP leaders and top aides to President Donald Trump got to work trying to salvage the legislation, which they hope to push through the House next week and the Senate the week after that.

Trump has promised to sign the bill, fulfilling seven years of GOP promises to undo "Obamacare," even though the legislation breaks the president's own past promises to safeguard Medicaid and provide health insurance for all.

"We think we've created a system that saves money and allows more people to get affordable health care," Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, said this morning on MSNBC.

Mulvaney disputed the CBO findings about how many people would lose coverage, while highlighting the agency's conclusions the GOP bill would reduce the deficit by $337 billion over a decade and lower insurance premiums by around 10 percent starting in 2020. The premiums reduction would come only after they sharply rose in 2018 and 2019.