House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) on Thursday predicted that the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) score on Republicans’ bill to repeal and replace Obamacare “will be a lot more attractive” than their report on the last, failed iteration of the bill.
“We believe that the new CBO score will be a lot more attractive in terms of the number of people covered,” Meadows told CNN’s Dana Bash.
The CBO in March estimated that 24 million people would lose their insurance over the next 10 years under the first iteration of the repeal bill, which Republican leaders later pulled after failing to muster the votes to get it through the House.
Meadows said that Republicans have “made some modifications, obviously, with amendments” to the bill currently under consideration.
“When we look at this, there has been a score,” he said, though the CBO has not yet scored the revised bill in its entirety. “We’ve had some individual analysis that looks at those amendments on what it would do to make sure that we’re insuring more people.”
Meadows predicted that the bill will pass the House “by a very narrow margin” and said that President Donald Trump has been “actively involved” in marshaling the votes for its passage.
“Obviously, the debate has been going on,” he said. “But I’m optimistic that we’ll take a good step forward and send it to the Senate and make it even better there.”
House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows: "We believe that the new CBO score will be a lot more attractive" https://t.co/kE3e1SEnZK
— Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) May 4, 2017
