Today, March 13, 2017, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its analysis of the GOP American Health Care Act. In its analysis, the CBO concluded, among other things the GOP finds very annoying, that in 2018, 14 million Americans would lose their health insurance.
Ironically, Trump, in January, said that the “repeal and replace” solution provided by the GOP, would cover “everyone,” and that the health insurance plans available would be “less expensive” and “better.” Unfortunately, the CBO analysis makes it clear that none of Trump’s advance claims would likely turn out to be true.
The GOP has spent the last several days — and today — trying to trash the CBO because their projections on the Affordable Care Act were not as accurate as they might have been.
However, there are some important reasons for that:
According to sources cited in today’s article from Yahoo News, “The CBO projections for coverage under the Affordable Care Act were inaccurate, partly because 19 states opted out of expanded Medicaid — which could not have been predicted at the time — and partly because the agency predicted that more employers would drop their own health insurance plans than actually did.
“While the CBO wasn’t perfect in its Obamacare scoring, it wasn’t too far off the mark. After the Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid expansion was optional for states, the office predicted that 89% of Americans below age 65 would have insurance in 2016. According to data from the Center for Disease Control, the number was actually 89.7.”