Editor:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has reviewed the latest version of the AHCA (Trumpcare) and forecasts the number of newly uninsured in 2026 will now be 23 million people as opposed to the 24 million forecast for the previous version ("Huffman, Humboldt Residents Decry House Passage of 'TrumpCare,'" posted May 4). The administration's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, has stated that one shouldn't put much credence in any of these numbers because, in his opinion, the CBO's predictions for the ACA (or Obamacare) participation were not accurate enough.

Regardless of his opinion, let's say the CBO was actually off by 50 percent and 11.5 million individuals would lose coverage. Mulvaney would still see this as acceptable because the real goal of the GOP is to reduce health care costs going forward, not maintaining or expanding the future number of individuals covered. It is unfortunate that our current GOP-dominated government has been able to define the health care issue in terms of dollars and not people covered. It will be interesting to see just what number of uninsured the final version of Trumpcare will define as acceptable.

Sherman Schapiro, Blue Lake