Tag Archives: cbo

Health Care Vote Likely to Happen on Thursday

by JocelynBraden1 Posted on May 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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It’s been literally hours since I last updated you on the Republican health care bill, so let’s catch up. Twitter is our friend:

What’s the rush?

Roger that. TrumpCare 1.0 arguably failed because of that hideous CBO score saying that 24 million people would lose coverage—a truly remarkable achievement since Obamacare only covers 20 million people in the first place. TrumpCare 3.0 is even worse, so God only knows what the CBO would say about it. Anyway, how bad can it be? I mean really?

Urk. Pretty bad. Even the AMA gets it:

Good for them. What’s remarkable, though, is how lonely their position is:

I don’t really get this either. Maybe they’ve just given up? Maybe they figure that as part of the hated establishment, their opposition is just more likely to make Republicans vote yes? Beats me.

This bill needs to be decisively put out of its misery. Yes, I suppose Democrats might benefit by forcing vulnerable House members to vote for it, and then killing it in the Senate, but that’s not worth the risk that, somehow, it might actually pass if it gets through the House. You never know. Best to make it crystal clear that there’s simply no needle Republicans can thread on this subject.

Then we get to wait and see if President Trump kills Obamacare anyway in a fit of pique by cutting off the CSR subsidies. This is really shaping up to be a great year.

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Health Care Vote Likely to Happen on Thursday

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Paul Ryan Isn’t Even Trying to Pass a Health Care Bill Anymore

by hwahuondekermade Posted on April 28, 2017

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The LA Times reports that House Republicans have steadfastly refused to reach out to Democrats in an effort to pass their health care bill. This is no surprise. They’re well aware of how they suckered Democrats in 2009, killing months of time in “talks” even though none of them ever planned to support Obamacare. They figure Democrats would do the same to them, and they’re right.

But then we get this:

And senior House Republicans and White House officials have almost completely shut out doctors, hospitals, patient advocates and others who work in the healthcare system, industry officials say, despite pleas from many healthcare leaders to seek an alternative path that doesn’t threaten protections for tens of millions of Americans.

….Health insurers, who initially found House Republicans and Trump administration officials open to suggestions for improving insurance markets, say it is increasingly difficult to have realistic discussions, according to numerous industry officials. “They’re not interested in how health policy actually works,” said one insurance company official, who asked not to be identified discussing conversations with GOP officials. “It’s incredibly frustrating.”

Another longtime healthcare lobbyist, who also did not want to be identified criticizing Republicans, said he’d never seen legislation developed with such disregard for expert input. “It is totally divorced from reality,” he said.

It’s increasingly obvious that Republicans aren’t actually trying to pass a health care bill. They just want to be able to tell their base that they tried. And President Trump wants to erase the taste of defeat from the first health care bill.

If House Republicans were serious, they’d engage with the health care industry. They haven’t. If they were serious they’d care about the CBO score. They don’t. If they were serious they’d be crafting a bill that could pass Senate reconciliation rules. They aren’t even trying. If Senate Republicans were serious they’d be weighing in with a bill of their own. They aren’t wasting their time.

In the beginning, I think Paul Ryan really did want to pass something, mainly so that it would make his tax cut plan easier to pass. But he’s given up on that. At this point he just wants a piece of paper that gets 218 votes and demonstrates that the Republican caucus isn’t hopelessly inept. He knows it will be DOA in the Senate, but at least it will get health care off his plate once and for all. Then he can move on to cutting taxes on the rich, which is what he really cares about. And he’ll have no trouble rounding up votes for that.

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Paul Ryan Isn’t Even Trying to Pass a Health Care Bill Anymore

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Obamacare Is Doing Fine Unless Trump Kills It

by ReneCogburn Posted on April 25, 2017

Mother Jones

The Congressional Budget Office says that Obamacare is in good shape:

Under current law, most subsidized enrollees purchasing health insurance coverage in the nongroup market are largely insulated from increases in premiums because their out-of-pocket payments for premiums are based on a percentage of their income; the government pays the difference. The subsidies to purchase coverage combined with the penalties paid by uninsured people stemming from the individual mandate are anticipated to cause sufficient demand for insurance by people with low health care expenditures for the market to be stable.

Insurance companies are starting to make money on Obamacare. Nearly 20 million people have health insurance because of Obamacare. Premiums will probably go up next year, but not by a huge amount. And even if they do go up, federal subsidies will shield most people from having to pay any more than this year. Because of all this, CBO believes that Obamacare will stay stable and strong:

President Trump tweeted the opposite today, saying once again that Obamacare was on the verge of failing. This is a lie, one that he’s repeated over and over. Obamacare will fail only if he cuts off its funding.

The reason for this post isn’t so much to mention that Trump lied again today. The sun also rose in the east, and I didn’t write about that. It’s to remind everyone—including me—to stop writing tweets and blog posts that say something like this:

Trump says Obamacare is in a death spiral. He’s wrong.

When we repeat the lie, we just give it more exposure. The end result is that people vaguely know something about Obamacare and death spiral and controversial, and that’s it. They don’t really know who’s right, they just know that they keep seeing stuff about Obamacare being in trouble.

So don’t do it. Instead, just write the truth and then mention that Trump has lied about it.

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Obamacare Is Doing Fine Unless Trump Kills It

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GOP Health Care Bill Is Worse Than Just Repealing Obamacare Completely

by LeticiaRentoul Posted on March 21, 2017

Mother Jones

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Over at The Upshot, Margot Sanger-Katz catches something that any of us might have noticed if we’d had keen enough eyes. The CBO famously projected that the Republican health care bill would result in 24 million people losing health insurance:

But one piece of context has gone little noticed: The Republican bill would actually result in more people being uninsured than if Obamacare were simply repealed. Getting rid of the major coverage provisions and regulations of Obamacare would cost 23 million Americans their health insurance, according to another recent C.B.O. report. In other words, 1 million more Americans would have health insurance with a clean repeal than with the Republican replacement plan, according to C.B.O. estimates.

Here’s what the CBO said in its January report. If only the individual mandate, the subsidies, and the Medicaid expansion are repealed, 32 million people will lose insurance by 2026. If, in addition, community rating, minimum coverage requirements, and the preexisting conditions ban are repealed—in other words, if essentially all of Obamacare is repealed and nothing put in its place—23 million people will lose insurance by 2026.

As it happens, the current Republican bill is similar to Option 1, which means the GOP is making progress. Under their old bill 32 million people would be kicked off the insurance rolls, while the new bill only kicks off 24 million. However, they could do even better by just repealing everything, full stop.

Now, it so happens that they can’t do that. Democrats can filibuster all the additional stuff in Option 2. Nevertheless, Sanger-Katz is right: it’s pretty remarkable that the Republican bill actually does more damage than repealing Obamacare and simply doing nothing at all. Not just any party can pull off something like that.

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GOP Health Care Bill Is Worse Than Just Repealing Obamacare Completely

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Is Obamacare Already Dead?

by BroderiCranford Posted on March 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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Paul Ryan and President Trump have been insisting for months that Obamacare is collapsing, failing, imploding, spiraling quickly into death. This is ridiculous, of course. It’s covering more than 20 million people at a lower cost than originally projected, and by any fair appraisal it’s been hugely successful.

But that’s not to say it has no problems. The Obamacare insurance pool is skewed toward the old and sick, and this has made it hard for insurers to turn a profit. Several smallish insurers have already left the market, and there are hundreds of counties in the US with only one insurer left on the exchanges. This is probably not fatal—CBO says the Obamacare market is stable—and it’s a problem that could be addressed fairly easily and inexpensively. Still, it does put the Obamacare market in modestly perilous shape.

But what now? Even if the godawful Republican repeal effort fails, there’s every reason to think that Congress will try again. What’s more, it’s clear that they’ll do everything they can to undermine Obamacare along the way. In a few months, insurance companies have to decide whether they want to participate in the exchange market in 2018, and I wonder what they’ll decide? The uncertainty is sky high now, and that means they have little incentive to continue. Remember, most insurers swallowed big losses early on in hopes of building a stable, profitable market later. But what’s the point of absorbing losses if it looks like—at best—years and years of chaos ahead?

It may be that 2018 is safe. The exchanges are pretty close to profitable now, and it’s probably worth it for most insurers to stay on board for at least another year to see what happens. Still, I wonder. Merely by upending everything and making it clear just how dedicated they are to cutting taxes on the rich and cutting health coverage for the poor, have Republicans already managed to effectively repeal Obamacare without passing a single page of legislation?

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Is Obamacare Already Dead?

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White House Says CBO Is Wrong, AHCA Would Actually Make 26 Million People Uninsured

by GabrielaSliva6 Posted on March 14, 2017

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My brain is imploding. HHS Secretary Tom Price said today that CBO’s estimate of insurance losses under the Republican health care bill “defy logic.” But it turns out the White House—which Price works for—agrees with the CBO. In fact, they think CBO is a little too optimistic. Here is Politico:

The White House’s own internal analysis of the GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare show even steeper coverage losses than the projections by the Congressional Budget Office, according to a document viewed by Politico on Monday.

The executive branch analysis forecast that 26 million people would lose coverage over the next decade, versus the 24 million CBO estimate — a finding that undermines White House efforts to discredit the forecasts from the nonpartisan CBO.

But…no…that’s completely…it doesn’t make…it’s…it’s…it’s…I mean…WHAT THE FUCKITY FUCKING FUCK-ALL FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?

Sorry about that. But I’m afraid this is about the most incisive analysis I have to offer. The Republican health care effort is a fiasco beyond even my wildest imagination.

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White House Says CBO Is Wrong, AHCA Would Actually Make 26 Million People Uninsured

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Conservatives Aren’t Yet Sure How to React to the CBO Health Care Report

by Evelyne61U Posted on March 14, 2017

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What do people think about the new CBO report on RepubliCare? I don’t mean us bleeding heart liberals. Naturally we think it’s great since it confirms that the Republican bill will decimate health care in America. But what do conservatives think?

HHS Secretary Tom Price says the CBO report is ridiculous. It “defies logic,” he says:

But over on Capitol Hill, Paul Ryan says he finds the CBO’s report “encouraging.” It exceeded his expectations and “gives us even more room to work on good, fine-tuning finishing touches.” Hoo boy. Even Fox News isn’t buying this:

This is some serious happy talk. Ryan must be taking lessons from Trump. In a statement, Ryan says the report confirms that the Republican bill will “lower premiums and improve access to quality, affordable care”—which is, um, a pretty creative reading of the report. More to the point, Ryan is thrilled that the CBO confirms that the bill will provide “massive tax relief.” This is true—though the tax relief is all for the rich—and it’s telling that Ryan doesn’t need to provide any spin on this point.

But what about all those people who will lose coverage? Ryan says, “I recognize and appreciate concerns about making sure people have access to coverage.” He doesn’t say he plans to do anything about this, but at least he appreciates the concerns. You know who else appreciates those concerns? Breitbart News:

The Drudge Report is pretty much ignoring the whole thing for the moment, as if they’re waiting for some kind of conservative consensus to form before they wade in. National Review is pretty silent too, though Dan McLaughlin writes that “The projections of who will and won’t be insured don’t actually mean anything.” The Weekly Standard’s Chris Deaton has a carefully neutral post up that says millions of Americans “would opt out of purchasing coverage once the federal government stops penalizing them for doing so.” That’s not quite what CBO says, though I admit you have to read the report carefully to recognize this.1

Basically, no one outside of Congress or the White House really wants to defend the Republican bill. There are a few half-hearted gibes at the CBO, but nothing more. I’ll be curious to see if tribal defenses kick in more strongly by tomorrow, once everyone has had a chance to suffer through all the liberal jeers and taunts.

1CBO says that subsidies after 2020 would be “significantly smaller” than they are now and that “some people would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums.” However, they are oddly cagey about exactly how big an effect this would have compared to the elimination of the individual and corporate mandates. I’m not sure what the reason for this is.

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Conservatives Aren’t Yet Sure How to React to the CBO Health Care Report

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CBO: If Obamacare Is Repealed, Premiums Will Skyrocket and Millions Will Lose Coverage

by JeromeHartz Posted on January 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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A few days ago Newt Gingrich wrote a jeremiad against the Congressional Budget Office, which acts as the official scorekeeper for the effect of legislation. It was obsolete, corrupt, left-wing, etc. etc. and simply didn’t know how to account for a dynamic, entrepreneurial, red-tape-cutter like Donald Trump.

Gingrich’s real problem, of course, is that the CBO is required to stick close to reality, which means that it often produces projections and estimates that are inconvenient for Republicans. Take today, for example. Senate Democrats asked for an estimate of what would happen if Obamacare were repealed. Here’s the CBO’s answer:

18 million people would lose insurance. By 2026, that would increase to 32 million.
Premiums in the individual market would skyrocket, increasing 20-25 percent in the first year and about 50 percent by 2026.
Insurers would exit the individual market en masse. About half the nation’s population would live in areas with no individual insurers at all, rising to three-quarters by 2026.

That is inconvenient, isn’t it? This is what happens if you eliminate Obamacare but keep in place the ban on pre-existing conditions—which Republicans all say they support and which they can’t repeal anyway. Premiums would skyrocket, 32 million people would lose coverage, and insurers would abandon about three-quarters of the country.

This is what Republicans need to address with their “replace” plan. But they can’t do it and they know it.

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CBO: If Obamacare Is Repealed, Premiums Will Skyrocket and Millions Will Lose Coverage

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Obamacare Is Beating Its Goal of Reducing the Uninsured Rate

by Jann9028oybinpl Posted on October 19, 2015

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I want to highlight something I wrote over the weekend that might have gotten buried a bit. As you may know, HHS recently announced that Obamacare would enroll 10 million people in the exchanges next year, compared to enrollment of 9 million this year. That makes it sound like Obamacare has stalled and will come nowhere near to hitting its early projections.

This probably isn’t true, but you can easily go very far down a rabbit hole trying to figure out who’s insured via what and how that compares to early projections. I did a bit of that in Saturday’s post, but I think there’s a much easier way of tracking Obamacare’s success or failure: just look at the total number of uninsured. That’s what matters, not whether they’re covered by Medicaid or exchanges or employers or something else.

So let’s review the tape. In 2010, just after Obamacare passed, CBO estimated that the uninsured rate would hit 8 percent by 2016. This was based on the original law, but in 2012 the Supreme Court made Medicaid expansion voluntary and most red states opted out. In July CBO updated its projections to account for this, increasing its estimate of uninsured by three percentage points. The next CBO estimate thus projected that the uninsured rate would be 11 percent by 2016. So how does that compare to reality? In its most recent survey, the CDC estimates that in the first quarter of 2015 the actual number of uninsured clocked in at 10.7 percent, and that’s likely to decline to about 10 percent or so by the end of 2016.

In other words, once you clear away all the underbrush it looks like Obamacare is meeting or beating its goals. Some of this might be due to an improving economy, but who cares? If the economy is doing well enough that more people are getting employer coverage and fewer are being forced onto the exchanges, that’s a good thing, not a knock on Obamacare.

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Obamacare Is Beating Its Goal of Reducing the Uninsured Rate

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CBO: Slow Growth Is the New Normal

by TangelaMiq Posted on August 25, 2015

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Here’s something that ought to be good news: according to the CBO, the output gap—the difference between actual GDP and potential GDP—should disappear by the end of 2017. This depends on the recovery continuing, of course, but still. It’s nice to see that the economy will probably be running at full steam within a couple of years.

Except that the news isn’t so rosy once you understand why the CBO thinks the output gap will shrink to zero. It’s not because GDP growth is great. It’s because potential GDP growth is kind of sucky:

CBO projects that real potential output over the 2020–2025 period will grow by 2.1 percent per year, on average. That figure is substantially lower than the agency’s estimate of the rate of growth that occurred during the business cycles from 1981 to 2007—3.1 percent per year, on average….According to CBO’s estimates, the recession and the ensuing slow recovery have weakened the factors that determine potential output (labor supply, capital services, and productivity) for an extended period.

….The main reason that potential output is projected to grow more slowly than it did in the earlier business cycles is that CBO expects growth in the potential labor force (the labor force adjusted for variations caused by the business cycle) to be much slower than it was earlier. Growth in the potential labor force will be held down by the ongoing retirement of the baby boomers; by a relatively stable labor force participation rate among working-age women, after sharp increases from the 1960s to the mid-1990s; and by federal tax and spending policies set in current law, which will reduce some people’s incentives to work.

CBO is basically buying into the secular stagnation theory here. The recession, along with demographic factors, has caused a permanent slowdown in the potential capacity of the US economy. Slow growth is the new normal.

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CBO: Slow Growth Is the New Normal

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