The Briefing Room
General Category => Health/Education => Topic started by: jmyrlefuller on February 21, 2019, 03:21:17 pm
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/government-report-reveals-cbo-was-was-scandalously-off-in-obamacare-estimates (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/government-report-reveals-cbo-was-was-scandalously-off-in-obamacare-estimates)
by Philip Klein
February 20, 2019
CBO estimates about the importance of an individual mandate to a national healthcare scheme prodded President Barack Obama into including the unpopular provision into the law in the first place. The mandate projections also played a key role in President Trump's two major legislative initiatives. The fact that the CBO assumed 14 million could lose coverage mainly due to the elimination of mandate penalties helped kill the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, while its later assumption that 13 million fewer insured individuals would mean less spending on subsidies from the federal government helped get the 2017 Republican tax cut across the finish line by improving the budgetary math. Yet those incredibly influential estimates now appear to have been wildly off.
In what was literally a footnote in its annual report on national health spending projections, actuaries for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Wednesday estimated that the elimination of the individual mandate would have a significantly smaller impact than the CBO has long estimated. Specifically, the CMS report revealed that 2.5 million more people would go without insurance in 2019 due to the repeal of the individual mandate's penalties, and the impact would be "smaller" thereafter.
(excerpt)
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Huh. Somehow the mistake accrued to the democrats' benefit.
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Huh. Somehow the mistake accrued to the democrats' benefit.
As all CBO estimates the past few years seem to have. Remember when they claimed cutting spending increased the deficit?
The CBO has been useless for years. It's time to shut it down.
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As all CBO estimates the past few years seem to have. Remember when they claimed cutting spending increased the deficit?
The CBO has been useless for years. It's time to shut it down.
The problem with that is that the CBO may be detrimental to us, but it's very useful to the other side.
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"Government report reveals CBO was scandalously off in Obamacare estimates..."
Sumpin' tells me that this was NOT a "mistake".
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The CBO is bound by law to use only static analysis methods which means that they are not allowed to take into account the market effects of anything they are analyzing. It's insane but true never-the-less.