Why the Congressional Budget Office’s Assessment of the Health Bill Is Important
The House of Representatives just passed a new health care law replacing the Affordable Care Act. He will now move to the Senate, but he has already received a lot of objections, and rightfully so: it’s pretty awful, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) hasn’t even appreciated him. Here’s what it means and why you should worry about it.
The CBO is a federal agency that analyzes and evaluates the impact of various pieces of legislation so that Congress can make an informed decision when voting. He offers estimates of how much the bill will cost and who will be affected. CBO analyzed the first draft of the back of the US Health Care Act in March. But that version was so bad that Republicans scrapped it and made some changes that the House of Representatives voted for today. The problem is that there is no new CBO assessment for this updated bill.
It’s unusual to vote for a health bill without knowing its CBO score, but here we are. Vox also explains why this is problematic :
“Notably, we didn’t hear one member of Congress say, ‘I love the idea of this bill, but I’ll wait until we see the CBO’s assessment to make a decision.’ … There is no CBO score that suggests this bill achieves the goals of House Republicans. At this point, Republicans seem to be more concerned with getting something out of their room than with what it is. This is a risky and potentially frustrating move. The CBO’s estimate will sooner or later become known, and Republicans may have to defend a law they don’t like at all. “
In short, they voted and passed a bill that we don’t even know much about, which is kind of important, given that the first version suggested that another 14 million people would be uninsured next year. It’s also worth noting that while we don’t have anything from the CBO, some nongovernmental organizations have published their own analyzes and found the situation to be pretty grim. Here we have detailed some of the more significant problems associated with this . However, it would be nice to know what the official estimates look like.
When asked about the importance of the CBO’s assessment, spokesman Sean Spicer dismissed it, saying the CBO was “far, far away” back in 2010, when the CBO was assessed under the Affordable Care Act. But it is not so.
While some estimates were flawed, such as the number of people who will receive policies through the exchange market (the CBO estimated 23 million in 2016, the actual number was 10.4 million), their overall predictions were fairly accurate. As stated on factcheck.org , “The CBO has actually quite accurately assessed the overall impact of the law on the uninsured.”
For example, the CBO predicts that by 2016 the number of people aged under 65 years who do not have insurance will be reduced to 30 million, and according to the last year the number was 27.9 million.
The CBO estimates that with the initial version of AHCA, another 24 million people will not be insured by 2026. He also estimated that the federal deficit will shrink by $ 337 billion over the next decade, most of which will come from Medicaid cuts. There is no update on these numbers, but we know the new law will cut Medicaid by $ 880 billion over the next decade. Overall, its prospects for health insurance are grim. Paul Markovic, executive director of Blue Shield of California, said the AHCA “can bring us back to a time when people born with a birth defect or ill could not purchase or afford insurance.”