Much to the bated breath of political analysts, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their analysis on the Senate iteration of Trumpcare on Monday. The most appropriate reaction to the report is, of course, this:
Here are five things you need to know about the CBO score.
1. The CBO estimated that 22 million people would be left uninsured under Trumpcare by 2026. This is a phony number. Here are the benchmark years listed in the report:
But a closer look at the report shows that in the first year alone, the primary driver of the uninsured stems from people choosing not to buy insurance with the repeal of the individual mandate, even with the recently added “continuous coverage” provision:
Indeed, the CBO’s score on the March version of Trumpcare floating around the House of Representatives overestimated Obamacare’s enrollment numbers and included states’ refusal to expand Medicaid as part of their uninsurance numbers; those false assumptions appear to be in the CBO’s latest report as well.
2. The CBO estimates that Trumpcare will reduce the budget deficit by $321 billion. Here’s the full breakdown of how the CBO reached this number:
Naturally, of the cuts listed, the Left is freaking out over the so-called cuts for one program in particular.
3. Medicaid would be cut by 26% under Trumpcare. First, it’s important to note what exactly is meant by “cuts”:
Even still, the reductions in the growth of spending aren’t slated to happen until 2025; it seems unlikely that a future Congress won’t overturn them.
4. Premiums would increase in the short-term but decrease in the long-term. The CBO projects that premiums for single individuals would increase by 20% in 2018, and 10% in 2019 before decreasing by 30% in 2020. By 2026, premiums for single individuals with benchmark plans will have decreased by 20%. However, single individuals who are 64 or older with yearly incomes over $26,500 and $56,900, would see their premiums increase by 26% and 33% by 2026, respectively.
But as Conservative Review‘s Daniel Horowitz has noted, the Obamacare death spiral will destroy the health care market by 2020, so these 2026 premium projections will be irrelevant since everyone will be on some sort of single-payer coverage by then.
5. The CBO has a poor track record, as The Daily Wire has outlined here, which means that the projections that the CBO makes here will likely be proven inaccurate years down the line, and we’ll wonder why the Left was hyperventilating about it.