Jarrett Stepman / @JarrettStepman / July 24, 2017
Perhaps too often,
Americans take the findings of independent government agencies—whether
executive or congressional—as fact.
The Congressional
Budget Office, which has impacted the health care debate, has consistently said
that repealing Obamacare would lead to around 22 to 23 million Americans losing
their insurance by 2026.
This has been a
frequent talking point for those that would like to keep President Barack
Obama’s signature health care law.
The health care of 22 million
Americans is on the line. Thank you, @SenSchumer, @SenGillibrand and @SenateDems for fighting back. https://t.co/zLb6GDjohj
— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) June 26, 2017
CBO says 22 million people lose insurance;
Medicaid cuts hurt most vulnerable Americans; access to healthcare in rural
areas threatened. 2/3
— Sen. Susan Collins
(@SenatorCollins) June 26, 2017
The @SenateGOP "health care" bill is back from the
dead to rip health care away from 22 million Americans. We are a better people
than that. pic.twitter.com/WQbuCf2m3s
— Elizabeth Warren
(@elizabethforma) July 20, 2017
CBO: 22 million Americans will lose
health care coverage under Senate GOP's latest plan to repeal Obamacare. https://t.co/j7lXdZvtVY
— Sandra Fluke (@SandraFluke) July 20, 2017
But a recent
commentary by health care expert Avik Roy pointed out how this number may be
misleading at best.
Roy wrote in
Forbes that according to leaked information he received from a congressional
staffer, this 22 million number is in fact mostly coming from the projection of
a repeal of the individual mandate.
The individual
mandate is one of the most controversial parts of Obamacare that essentially
forces Americans to buy health insurance, or receive a fine. Republican-backed
repeal proposals to repeal universally aim to eliminate this regulation.
Entirety of CBO coverage difference
w/ACA & BCRA: BCRA’s repeal of individual mandate & CBO’s outdated
baseline. https://t.co/evL8CdJN5Zpic.twitter.com/hqbKUDRycf
— Avik Roy (@Avik) July 22, 2017
Roy wrote that “of
the 22 million fewer people who will have health insurance in 2026 under the
Senate [health care] bill, 16 million will voluntarily drop out of the market
because they will no longer face a financial penalty for doing so: 73 percent
of the total.”
Unlike the
progressive narrative that repealing Obamacare will lead to tens of millions of
Americans getting booted from their plans, it shows that nearly three-quarters
of those leaving their plans will voluntarily withdraw from the ones they have.
An enormous 73
percent of the 22 million number will simply stop buying the product they are
forced to purchase under current law.
This important fact
has been mostly left out of the debate, as the CBO has not been entirely
transparent with how its numbers are calculated. So far, the CBO has
essentially refused to explain the primary reason so many Americans will go
uninsured.
The CBO has been
consistently praised for its purportedly unbiased analysis. A recent commentary
for Wired said that “since its inception four decades ago, the CBO has occupied
a rarified space in which the objectivity of data reigns.”
Americans are simply
given a presumably nonpartisan number that pours out of the inner sanctums of a
tight-knit agency as they debate the merits of policy that impacts all
Americans and generations to come.
But in the messy
space of politics, opaqueness of methodology can return skewed or incomplete
results.
Drew
Gonshorowski, a health care expert for The Heritage Foundation, wroteabout the
CBO’s transparency problem in The Hill. He wrote:
The CBO could better serve
legislators, media and researchers if their models and methods were made
public. Lifting this veil would allow more discussion around the effects of
various proposals without having to wait for an explicit CBO score … [And]
maybe one of the most important aspects of such a change, this would allow
legislators to have real conversations about the effects of their legislation,
publicly, with less delay.
Reps.
Mark Walker, R-N.C., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in
a commentary for the Washington Examiner how often CBO projections have been
wrong and why it’s wrong for Congress to “blindly follow” its estimates.
For instance, they
noted how the original 2010 CBO projections for Obamacare claimed that “21
million Americans would enroll in the insurance exchanges by 2016.”
The real number ended
up being around 10 million and is one of the reasons the market is so unstable.
The American people
deserve an open debate on one of the most important policy issues of our
generation.
It is a debate over
the priorities and outcomes of a health care system that favors the individual
and the family over the collective—one that throws vast decision-making power
to government and bureaucracies, or is limited and placed closest to the hands
of the people.
This is why
transparency over potential policy outcomes is so essential.
This
article has been corrected to note that the Washington Examiner commentary
criticizing CBO predictions was co-authored by Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.
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