Lawmakers are bracing for the release of a report which will reveal the costs and limits of the Republicans' bill to repeal and replace major portions of Obamacare, CNN is reporting.
It is anticipated the Congressional Budget Office's analysis, which could come out as early as Monday, will detail how millions of Americans currently covered under Obamacare, could lose coverage under the GOP'S new bill, according to the news network.
Republican leaders are downplaying the importance of the report. They argue those with Obamacare have been hit with high deductibles and rising premiums and need help, CNN reported. The GOP bill does away with the Obamacare mandate that everyone must have health insurance.
"The one thing I'm certain will happen is CBO will say, 'Well, gosh, not as many people will get coverage.' You know why? Because this isn't a government mandate,'" House Speaker Paul Ryan said on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday.
"This is not the government that makes you buy what we say you should buy and therefore the government thinks you're all going to buy it.
"What we're trying to achieve here is bringing down the cost of care, bringing down the cost of insurance not through government mandate and monopolies but by having more choices and competition."
But Democrats are expected to counter the new bill will unnecessarily strip coverage away from those who already have it under Obamacare. They believe the CBO report could change the whole debate on the Republicans' bill.
"The reality is that Donald Trump promised voters that they would keep their coverage," Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress told CNN.
"And now we have estimates from this plan that he endorsed that 15 million people would lose it.
"The reality is here, people relied on him, they voted for him for who've got the Affordable Care Act to saying they would keep their coverage and it would get better. And the Ryan plan is less coverage at a highest cost, worse all around."