As Katie reported last evening, the latest Congressional Budget Office score of the House-passed American Health Care Act contains good news and bad news for the GOP. On the bright side, it appears that its central fiscal outcome complies with reconciliation rules, which would allow the process to move forward without a complicated tweak-and-do-over vote in the House. The nonpartisan scorekeeper also found that individual market premiums "would decline on average," and would reduce the federal deficit by $119 billion. On the other hand, media outlets are running with false headlines like these:
"CBO estimates 23 million people will lose health insurance over next 10 years under American Health Care Act"
"JUST IN: CBO: 23 million will lose health coverage under GOP ObamaCare repeal bill.http://hill.cm/Yy9FqIL"
This is deeply misleading, for reasons that we explained in detail when the CBO released its March analysis of the initial ACHA. In short, the large bulk of those who are said to be "losing" coverage do not currently have coverage. You cannot "lose" something that you don't have. CBO assumes that these people would eventually gain coverage through the magical powers of Obamacare's individual mandate (more on that in a moment), or through hypothetical future expansions of Medicaid by most of the states that haven't done so to date. Current Medicaid beneficiaries, including those who've gained (very flawed) coverage under Obamacare's expansion, are grandfathered in under the House GOP proposal. It also bakes into these new numbers a slew of empirically-incorrect projections that have been disproven by actual data. When Obamacare first passed, CBO anticipated that by 2016, 21 million Americans would enroll in the law's exchanges. When 2016 rolled around, the real number was just about 10 million. A massive miss. Remarkably, CBO relies on its revised 2016 "baseline" in its new calculations -- but the 2016 baseline was also off by millions. By their own admission. Despite these demonstrable misfires, CBO is still using verifiably-disproven, Obamacare-friendly estimates as the basis for comparison:
Fact Check: No, the Republican Healthcare Bill Would Not Cause 23 Million People to "Lose" Insurance
"CBO estimates 23 million people will lose health insurance over next 10 years under American Health Care Act"
"JUST IN: CBO: 23 million will lose health coverage under GOP ObamaCare repeal bill.http://hill.cm/Yy9FqIL"
This is deeply misleading, for reasons that we explained in detail when the CBO released its March analysis of the initial ACHA. In short, the large bulk of those who are said to be "losing" coverage do not currently have coverage. You cannot "lose" something that you don't have. CBO assumes that these people would eventually gain coverage through the magical powers of Obamacare's individual mandate (more on that in a moment), or through hypothetical future expansions of Medicaid by most of the states that haven't done so to date. Current Medicaid beneficiaries, including those who've gained (very flawed) coverage under Obamacare's expansion, are grandfathered in under the House GOP proposal. It also bakes into these new numbers a slew of empirically-incorrect projections that have been disproven by actual data. When Obamacare first passed, CBO anticipated that by 2016, 21 million Americans would enroll in the law's exchanges. When 2016 rolled around, the real number was just about 10 million. A massive miss. Remarkably, CBO relies on its revised 2016 "baseline" in its new calculations -- but the 2016 baseline was also off by millions. By their own admission. Despite these demonstrable misfires, CBO is still using verifiably-disproven, Obamacare-friendly estimates as the basis for comparison:
Fact Check: No, the Republican Healthcare Bill Would Not Cause 23 Million People to "Lose" Insurance
