When it comes to health care, there are lies, damned lies, and CBO-bashing.
.. But the really big push over the next couple of days will be the attempt to trash CBO estimates that are almost sure to show massive losses, even if the CBO is somehow prevented from considering the Cruz amendment.
.. everyone, and I mean everyone, who knows something about insurance markets is declaring the same thing: that this proposed bill would be a disaster. We’ve got the insurance industry declaring it “simply unworkable”; the American Academy of Actuaries saying effectively the same thing; AARP up in arms; the Urban Institute forecasting disaster; and more.
.. Yes, it overestimated the number of people who would sign up for the exchanges. But this was largely because it overestimated the number of employers who would drop coverage and send their workers to the exchanges. Overall, its estimates of coverage gains and premiums weren’t that far off,
.. Trumpcare – or maybe we should call it Cruzcare – is a leap into the known. Before the ACA, most states allowed insurers to discriminate based on medical history. Many also restricted access to Medicaid as much as they could. So we have a very good idea what health care in America would look like if the BCRA passes: it would look like health care in unregulated, low-aid states pre-ACA.
Or to not put too fine a point on it, it would look like health care in Texas circa 2010, with 26 percent of the nonelderly population uninsured.
.. It would establish a system very much like that which existed in those parts of America in which vast numbers of people lacked coverage in the past; why would this time be different?