Tuesday, June 23, 2015

CBO Flip-Flops On Scoring Of ObamaCare Repeal

by JASmius



Let me see if I have all of this straight. The same Unaffordable Care Act that the Congressional Budget Office first said would explode the federal budget deficit and then was coerced by the Obama Regime into torturing its numbers until they fit the "bend the cost curve down" state-mandated fiction the White House wanted and which has been long-since exposed as the criminal fraud it is will INCREASE the federal deficit if it is repealed?

Run this by me again?

- Me, five days ago


Did they take my advice, or was Bloomberg News only telling half the story?:

Repealing Obamacare would reduce the federal budget deficit by $216 billion over the next decade and would generate a gross savings for the government of $1.65 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Sounds rather drastically different from the Bloomberg piece, doesn't it?

"Those savings would stem primarily from eliminating federal subsidies for insurance purchased through exchanges and from reducing outlays for Medicaid," the CBO said of the gross savings in its report, which was released last week.

Republicans widely slammed the nonpartisan agency's report because of its finding that repealing the [Una]ffordable Care Act would increase the deficit by as much as $353 billion over ten years.

That determination was derived from an alternative examination of data by CBO researchers.

"Pro-ObamaCare" examination, IOW.

The report did say that getting rid of what is considered [by Barack Obama] Barack Obama's signature domestic "achievement" would most likely boost the economy as more people sought employment to get health insurance.

That move would reduce the net cost of ObamaCare to the government by $137 billion over the decade, according to the report.

Ah, I see where the problem is: $353 billion - $216 billion = $137 billion.  The last sentence in the quote above should read, "That move would reduce the net cost of ObamaCare repeal to the government to $137 billion over the decade...."  Don't they have editors at Newsmax?

Of course, editing also applies to substantive content, such as pointing out that repealing ObamaCare would not "increase spending on Medicare" because the former never "cut" spending on the latter in the first place.  That purported "cut" - ending the so-called "Doc fix" - was part of the "bending the cost curve downward" fraud designed to create the illusion of the Unaffordable Care Act not increasing federal budget deficits, as the Doc fix - an annual congressional ritual - was never, and never is, going to be repealed   An accurate cost analysis of a hypothetical ObamaCare repeal would take that reality into account and adjust the "cost" accordingly to reflect a net savings from getting rid of O's hammer & sickle stepchild.  Which, in reality, would be the only possible outcome.

If Keith Hall needs any other help, he knows where to find me.

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