Earlier Tuesday, we posted a map that assesses the likelihood of each state participating in the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion—something the Supreme Court ruled states had the right to do.
Now, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has produced its own estimate (pdf) of how many Americans are likely to lose coverage because their state opts out of the expansion: 3 million.
The CBO report doesn't lay out which states it expects will participate and which won't (we think our map remains the best guide to that question). But it does predict that "some states will probably forgo the expansion entirely," meaning about 6 million people will be prevented from joining Medicaid. However, it projects, around 3 million of those will qualify for subsidies to be covered under the state exchanges—leaving another 3 million without coverage.
The report's main focus is the cost of the law. CBO calculates that with 3 million fewer people covered, that cost will fall by about $84 billion.
