Sen. Angus King said Wednesday that the Senate is “flying blind” on the Cassidy-Graham Obamacare repeal effort without a budget office score.
“We don’t have a Congressional Budget Office score on this,” Mr. King, Maine independent, said on CNN. “We’re flying blind and they’re going to rush this through, or try to rush this through, I hope they fail next week, without really knowing what the impacts are going to be, what the costs are going to be, how many people are going to lose their coverage.”
Mr. King, who caucuses with Democrats, said that Sen. Bill Cassidy’s plan would actually cause Maine to lose money. Mr. Cassidy, Louisiana Republican, said that his plan actually evens out Obamacare funds to states, whereas the current law gives more funding to some states over the other.
“I don’t understand what Senator Cassidy is talking about in terms of additional money, because all the analysis I’ve seen [shows] that actually Maine is going to lose over the course of this bill, in terms of the money that’s flowing into the state now to support health care,” he said.
Mr. Cassidy is co-sponsoring the bill with Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, to provide funding to states through block grants. The plan also repeals the Obamacare mandates and aims to allow states to build their own health insurance system.
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