Note the difference between the CBO projections of exchange enrollees (red line) and the ACTUAL number (plus projections based on the actual number) of enrollees.
Posted on 07/24/2017 10:13:48 AM PDT by Lorianne
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. New information from the Congressional Budget Office—leaked to me by a congressional staffer—shows why.
CBO’s faith in the individual mandate’s magical powers
For years, the CBO has been convinced—despite real-world experience to the contrary—that Obamacare’s individual mandate is the biggest reason why that law has increased the number of Americans with health insurance.
When Senator Barack Obama ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, he mocked Hillary’s insistence on an individual mandate. “If a mandate was the solution,” he said at the time, “you could try that to solve homelessness by mandating that everybody buy a house. But the reason they don’t have a house is they don’t have the money.”
After Obama became president, the CBO told him not having an individual mandate would mean his health reform plan would cover 16 million fewer people. So Obama relented, and included an individual mandate in what we now call Obamacare.
Proposals to repeal and replace Obamacare from congressional Republicans and right-of-center think tanks disagreed on a number of things, but they were unanimous in repealing Obamacare’s individual mandate. The idea that Americans should be forced by the government to buy a private product, merely for the offense of being alive, is seen by all conservatives as a constitutional injury.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
CBO has refused to disclose the impact of mandate repeal on coverage estimates
On a related note: remove the mandate and the whole thing collapses. You need tax slaves to pay for the Obamacare Ponzi scheme.
Note the difference between the CBO projections of exchange enrollees (red line) and the ACTUAL number (plus projections based on the actual number) of enrollees.
The GOP has had a number of years to actually fix American healthcare.
They have not.
Obama finally did what had to be done.
If the GOP wants to rejigger the set-up such that Americans who were not covered before, are covered now, then fine. But that does not seem to be the case.
The GOP seems intent on eliminating coverage for some Americans.
That is why it was defeated.
Obama did not create a good final solution, but he was in charge of an improvement for many Americans.
If the GOP really wants to fix our medical coverage, fine.
But don’t remove coverage for some people.
That is what we needed, and that is what the GOP must not remove, from any “fix”.
Or it isn’t really a fix. It is damaging our healthcare.
The ‘fix’ that was needed was to allow real competition.
Before Obamacare the health insurance market was dominated by State government controlled insurance monopolies who then excluded individuals not in groups (business and industry monopolies).
Granted the situations before Obamacare was still screwed up and monopolistic and protectionist for big insurance and big med ... but all Obamacare did was to INCREASE those monopolies and make them federally sanctioned instead of State sanctioned.
One trap Trump and the GOP are in is you cant repeat the personal mandate without repealing the pre-existing conditions one too and that second one is very popular, always had been.
That is why Trump has in the past promised to keep it,
Bookmark.
You are full of enough stuff to put the fertilizer companies out of business.
You are full of enough stuff to put the fertilizer companies out of business. Why don’t you go on over to the Dimoldrat underground?
The key to winning is understanding Perspective & Focus.
Or see Tactics For Victory!
Now, granted, we are at a disadvantage, because of the overwhelming bias of the mass media. We need to respond not only to the Left's cherry picked arguments, but to the difficulty in being heard. So each of us must do what we can, every day, in our own circles.
Yes, heaven forbid that supposedly free US citizens get to decide what, if any, health insurance they will pay for. The bulk of people who may “lose” health insurance under the GOP plan will be young people, and they will “lose” it because they are no longer forced by the government to purchase it, and decide it is not a wise use of their limited income to pay for health insurance.
Nothing could be more damaging to health care than the absurdity of allowing a far off bureaucracy in Washington to define the standards of care that govern local physician/patient relations. Federal control or dictation in health care makes not one whit more sense than does Federal efforts to control economic activity by bureaucratic mandate.
The ACA helped people who got free medicaid and somewhat helped people who got subsidized rates of the exchange (IF you can afford the very high deductibles). However, it hurt just about everyone else and the hurt was far worse than the help. You obviously benefited from the ACA but my parents had their monthly healthcare plan go from $300 per month to $1400 per month and had their deductibles go up. Yes, the GOP has had a long time to fix healthcare and hasn’t but the ACA wasn’t an improvement (overall).
There was no federal individual mandate penalty in 2013.
Did rates shoot downward for 2014, when the individual mandate penalty was first applied? No
Did rates shoot downward for 2015, when the individual mandate penalty was increased? No
Did rates shoot downward for 2016, when the individual mandate penalty was increased again? No
Why would rates shoot up if the individual mandate penalty was abolished?
People have long bought health coverage simply because they felt it was necessary.
The only reason most people don’t buy coverage is simply because they can get care via the EMTALA for “free” or they can’t afford to buy a package with so many bells and whistles.
Perhaps the EMTALA should be repealed too.
I certainly think the leftist laundry list of goodies (to be paid for mainly by others) should be replaced by insurance company choice (and of yours and of mine too).
Without the mandate, millions of people will CHOOSE not to buy that crappy, expensive insurance.
You conflate healthcare with coverage with the word “our.”
Healthcare in this era is not insurance, it is a benefit many people have been conditioned should be free.
The defect in 0care was not only the mandate, but the benefits, also mandated.
This drove up use of healthcare, signalling a recognizable trend and inevitable outcome to those willing to see with open eyes.
Now millions of Americans see premiums for what they still refer to as “insurance” becoming financially untenable despite the risk of being without.
Your word was “damaging” in the current sense: 0care DESTROYED healthcare, but 0care was not the catalyst.
The catalyst for destruction of our healthcare system is the very government agencies charged with not only safeguarding our health, but creating the minefield of health threats out there.
We recently had a drop in life-expectancy; that was long overdue.
This will get MUCH WORSE before it gets better and throwing money at the problem, let alone conflating politics with a regulatory disaster, is NEVER going to fix anything...
...it only sets up the next political game.
Batter-UP!
I’ve stated it repeatedly elsewhere: The problems facing this country transcend POTUS administrations; until people can pull their heads out of their a&&&s and work the problem, we’re all just pawns who will be subject to manipulation.
This is the reality of modern American government in this era.
yes and by choosing the Dems are saying they will be “kicked off”
that is what the article is trying to say ... that their “kicked off” rhetoric is misleading to say the least.
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