(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump claimed victory for“essentially” repealing Obamacare in the Republican tax billthat cleared the House on Wednesday.

The bill eliminates a tax penalty for Americans who don’t carryhealth insurance, a pillar of the Affordable Care Act, while leaving thelaw’s other elements intact.

Insurers have warned that eliminating the requirement will causethem to raise premiums.

Healthy people will have less incentive to sign up for coverage,leaving insurers with a sicker pool of customers overall, thecompanies and many economists and health policy experts say.

“The individual mandate is being repealed. That means Obamacareis being repealed,” Trump told reporters at the White House onWednesday. “We have essentially repealed Obamacare.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated last monththat repealing the individual mandate would lead to 13 million moreuninsured in 2027, and that premiums in the individual market wouldincrease by about 10 percent.

Lifting the penalty saves the government $338 billion over thenext decade, the CBO said, because some of those who go uninsuredwould have gotten subsidized coverage. Lawmakers used that savingsto reduce taxes.

Removing the individual mandate doesn’t undo other essentialelements of Obamacare. The law still requires insurers to sellpolicies to sick people at the same prices as healthy people, andprovides subsidies for low-income families to make health plansmore affordable.

Trump also boasted that he successfully downplayed the provisionto avoid media coverage of the change.

“We didn’t want to bring it up. I told people specifically ‘bequiet with the fake news media because I don’t want them talkingtoo much about it,’” Trump said. “But now that it’s approved I cansay: the individual mandate on health care, where you had to paynot to have insurance -- think of that one, you pay not to haveinsurance -- the individual mandate has been repealed.”

Trump said Republicans will “come up with something that will bemuch better” to replace the mandate. Republican legislation toreplace much of the Affordable Care Act failed earlier thisyear.

The true importance of the mandate has been debated byeconomists and policymakers, and the CBO has said it is revisinghow it calculates the effect. S&P Global Ratings suggested lastmonth that rolling back the penalty would save less than expected,and increase the number of uninsured by only 3 million to 5million. About 6.5 million people paid an average penalty of $470for not having insurance in 2015, according to IRS data.

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