Press Releases

The CBO’s Flawed Infatuation with the Individual Mandate

Leaked data, previously undisclosed to the public by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), confirmed that at least 73 percent of the CBO’s projected health insurance coverage “losses” related to healthcare legislation is a direct result of efforts to repeal the individual mandate.

As the two articles by prominent healthcare policy expert Avik Roy included below demonstrate, the CBO projects that any legislation which includes a repeal of the individual mandate will result in at least 16 million Americans making the decision to not purchase insurance, regardless of what else is included.  

“By definition, you haven’t been ‘kicked off’ your insurance if the only reason you’re no longer buying it is that the government has stopped fining you.” - Avik Roy

This information provides critical context for the healthcare debate as proponents of Obamacare continue to falsely argue that efforts to repeal and replace the law will “kick” millions of Americans off their insurance. From Roy: “If you’ve read a newspaper or watched cable news in the last month, you’ve probably seen someone say that the Senate GOP health care bill would ‘kick 22 million Americans off of their health insurance.’ But it’s not true.”

Leaked CBO Numbers: 73 Percent of GOP ‘Coverage Losses’ Caused By Individual Mandate Repeal

July 23, 2017

Excerpt:

“…Nearly three-fourths of the difference in coverage between Obamacare and the various GOP plans derives from a single feature of the Republican bills: their repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate…any replacement that repeals the individual mandate will be scored by the CBO as covering at least 16 million fewer people — and probably worse.”

Read the full article here: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/449765/leaked-cbo-numbers-73-gop-coverage-losses-caused-individual-mandate-repeal.

CBO's Secret: 73% Of Coverage Difference Between Obamacare & GOP Bills Driven By Individual Mandate
 
July 22, 2017

Excerpt:

“…But buried within the CBO’s reports is a key fact: the vast majority of those coverage ‘losses’ occur because the GOP bills repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate. In its July 20 estimate of the most recent version of the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act, or BCRA, CBO says that in 2018, 15 million fewer Americans will have health insurance under the bill, two years before its repeal of Obamacare’s insurance subsidies takes effect.
 

“Why? It’s ‘primarily because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated.’

“Ok. But here’s the curiosity. The CBO has refused to disclose the specific, year-by-year impact of that thing that it says is the primary reason that people will go uninsured in 2018 and beyond.

“This is a critical omission.

“You’d think that CBO would want to include in its tables its actual estimates of how much impact the individual mandate is having on coverage under the GOP bill, and how much impact other factors are having, like the bill’s replacement of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion with refundable tax credits.

“You’d think that, but CBO has refused to disclose that breakdown. The end result is a lot of misleading commentary about how Republican plans ‘take coverage away’ from 22 million people.”

Read the full article here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/07/22/cbo-three-fourths-of-coverage-difference-between-obamacare-gop-bills-driven-by-individual-mandate/#3801fd803627.
 
BONUS:

If you remember, millions of Americans actually lost their health insurance under Obamacare. Something the Obama Administration knew would happen, despite telling the American people “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan.”

And as health insurers continue to exit the health insurance market in the Obamacare exchanges, patients across the country are being left with nowhere to turn.