Amid an increasingly intense battle over the GOP healthcare plan, a group closely associated with House Republican leaders is starting to air new television ads on Tuesday defending the bill, The Washington Post reports.
The 30-second advertisement go on the air just a day after the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis projecting that about 24 million more people would be uninsured under the GOP plan than under Obamacare, particularly those who need insurance the most.
This has increased opposition to the proposal, even among some Republicans who say that such a number would be unacceptable and the plan should be re-evaluated to address some of the concerns raised in the report.
But the American Action Network advertisements ask viewers to "thank" Republicans for living up to their promise of "replacing the Affordable Care Act with the better health-care you deserve," the Post reports.
The ads go on to claim that the new plan will provide "more choices and lowers costs. Putting doctors and patients in charge again. No more big government penalties or job-killing mandates."
The opposition to the GOP plan is coming not only from Democrats and Republicans who are unwilling to accept such a large increase in those without insurance, but also from conservatives who claim the plan does not go far enough in undoing Obamacare.
Daniel Horowitz of the Conservative Review expressed that viewpoint by stressing that the bill does not repeal Obamacare.
He emphasized, for example, "that the regulations of Obamacare, which by the way are absolutely not repealed in the GOP bill, are solely responsible for $19 billion in lost wages, 10,000-plus fewer business establishments, nearly 300,000 lost jobs and $51 billion in costs."
Opposition from conservatives does not appear to have been mitigated by the CBO report, which also said the plan would lower the deficit by $337 billion over the next decade.
Assuming all Democrats in the Senate vote against the plan, the Trump administration can afford only two defections from the Republicans in the Senate or the bill will not be able to pass.
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