House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan has published his proposal for downsizing the federal government. In the hours and days to come, you're going to hear a lot of different numbers from his proposal. But let me draw your attention to a figure that's not in there: 32 million. Based on the available information, that's roughly the number of people likely to lose health insurance, relative to current law, if the budget were to become reality.
The spending blueprint calls explicitly for repealing the Affordable Care Act. That means taking insurance away from all of the people who are supposed to get coverage in 2014, when the Act is fully implemented. And Ryan's budget document proposes no alternative mechanism for significantly expanding coverage or making insurance itself more secure.
Back in January, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed what such a change would mean when it produced an estimate of repeal for Speaker John Boehner:
...about 32 million fewer nonelderly people would have health insurance in 2019, leaving a total of about 54 million nonelderly people uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, compared with a projected share of 94 percent under current law (and 83 percent currently).
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http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/86269/ryan-budget-repeal-health-32-million-uninsured