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The Congressional Budget Office has scored the American Health Care Act—passed earlier this month by the GOP-controlled House—and only 23,000,000 Americans will lose their health care coverage. The previous version of the bill would've resulted in 24,000,000 Americans losing their health care coverage. So, hey, good news for the 1,000,000 people who would've lost their health care coverage had the original bill passed! It's still bad news for the 23,000,000 people who will lose their health care coverage if the Senate approves a similar bill, of course, and there's lots of bad news in the CBO report for people who manage to hold on to their health insurance after the Republicans get through "repealing and replacing" Obamacare. People who still have health insurance are going to see their premiums rise, according to the CBO, and the health insurance they're left with will "fail to cover important medical services, and people with pre-existing illnesses could be shut out of coverage" entirely, reports the New York Times. People who buy insurance on the private market will have to go without mental health care, addiction treatment, maternity care, or rehabilitation services. So who comes out ahead? Besides the millionaires and billionaires who'll be getting massive tax cuts?

Winners would include people who are young, healthy and earn higher incomes. They would be better off, assuming they didn’t develop serious health problems.

The Republican health care plan saves money by making health care available to people who don't need it and denying care to people who do. If you don't need insurance, you can have it. The moment you need it, you can't have it anymore.

TPM follows the money:

The CBO said that latest version of the legislation would save the government $119 billion, $32 billion less than its March analysis of a previous version of the bill that did not include some changes made to bring conservatives and moderate Republicans on board. The $834 billion cut in Medicaid funding and $276 billion in savings by making the tax credits for individual insurance less generous are offset by the $664 billion the legislation would add to the deficit in eliminating Obamacare’s taxes, a cut that would mainly benefit high-income earners and industry.

But let's not be cynical. Republicans aren't just gutting health care to provide tax cuts to billionaires. They're also doing it to turn American workers into serfs. Take it away, Paul Krugman:

Until 2014, there was basically only one way Americans under 65 with pre-existing conditions could get health insurance: by finding an employer willing to offer coverage. Some employers were in fact willing to do so. Why? Because there were major tax advantages—premiums aren’t counted as taxable income—but to get those advantages employer plans must offer the same coverage to every employee, regardless of medical history. But what if you wanted to change jobs, or start your own business? Too bad: you were basically stuck (and I knew quite a few people in that position).

Then Obamacare went into effect, guaranteeing affordable care even to those with pre-existing medical conditions. This was a hugely liberating change for millions. Even if you didn’t immediately take advantage of the new program to strike out on your own, the fact was that now you could. But maybe not for much longer. Trumpcare—the American Health Care Act—would drastically reduce protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions. And even if that bill never becomes law, the Trump administration is effectively sabotaging individual insurance markets, so that in many cases Americans who lose employer coverage will have no place to turn—which will in turn tie those who do have such coverage to their current employers.

You might say, with only a bit of hyperbole, that workers in America, supposedly the land of the free, are actually creeping along the road to serfdom, yoked to corporate employers the way Russian peasants were once tied to their masters’ land. And the people pushing them down that road are the very people who cry “freedom” the loudest.

UPDATE: And this...