Story highlights Lanhee Chen: CBO score provides an opportunity for GOP bill's sponsors to bolster support amongst conservatives

Trump, GOP must win over moderates who will want changes to the law that boost coverage, Chen writes

Lanhee J. Chen is the David and Diane Steffy Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He served as the policy director for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign and was a senior aide at the US Department of Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush administration. The views expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) The Congressional Budget Office has released its estimate of House Republican legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, and it highlights the tricky balance that President Donald Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan and other supporters of the proposed American Health Care Act have to strike.

Lanhee J. Chen

On the one hand, the CBO score provides an opportunity for the bill's sponsors to bolster support amongst conservatives, some of whom have been critical of the congressional leadership's approach -- but whose backing will likely be needed if the bill is to pass the GOP-controlled House.

This conservative support may come, however, at the expense of moderates, who will be vocal when debate over the bill reaches the Senate. They might only support the legislation with changes that will improve upon CBO estimates of how many people it will leave uninsured.

For starters, the American Health Care Act (AHCA) is estimated to reduce deficits by $337 billion over the next 10 years -- an important selling point for fiscal conservatives and those concerned about the sustainability of the health care system (and particularly Medicaid) going forward.

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Furthermore, the legislation includes almost $600 billion in tax cuts over the next ten years by repealing many of Obamacare's taxes.

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