One of the most popular excuses is the use of Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “projections,” the latest of which claims that if Congress passes a GOP-sponsored measure that seeks to peel back, but not completely repeal, Obamacare, that 23 million fewer Americans will be insured over the next 10 years.
Already Democrats are poisoning the repeal well by claiming that Republicans are ogres who don’t care about “the poor,” “the elderly,” and “the children” — all claims that are being dutifully parroted by the disgustingly dishonest “mainstream” media. And why wouldn’t they oppose repeal? After all, the Democratic Party gave us the Obamacare debacle in the first place. (RELATED: Obamacare exchanges hit with over 50 percent fail rate; feds claim the worse the glitches, the bigger the success!)
But even some Republicans, including those who once shouted “Repeal and Replace!” from the rafters, are getting squishy about getting rid of the not-so-‘Affordable’ Care Act. And like Democrats, they are using the latest CBO projection as “proof” that they cannot, ‘in good conscience,’ vote for the current bill.
This is nothing but a political ruse.
First, and probably foremost, the donor class of both parties doesn’t want Obamacare repealed, replaced, or touched in any way. As National Public Radio notes, several politically active organizations including many representing the medical community don’t want the GOP-sponsored bill to pass. You might think that sounds goofy for the medical community’s lobbyists to support a law that has been so disruptive of health care in America, but when the federal government controls hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of health care payments, then obviously hospitals and doctor’s organizations are going to want a piece of that action.
But secondly, relying on the CBO’s projections is a fool’s errand; the government analysis agency has been wrong a lot more than it has been right when it comes to estimating the impact of Obamacare.
As noted by the Washington Examiner, the CBO was off by 12 million people in estimating how many Americans would eventually sign up under the law’s health care exchanges — which provided even middle-income enrollees with taxpayer-subsidized monthly health insurance premiums, via a dramatic expansion of Medicaid.
Also, the manner in which the CBO estimated a loss of health coverage for 23 million Americans over the next decade did not take into account that millions of those people would voluntarily choose to go without coverage, most often because they are young and healthy and find no real need to spend money on health insurance (that, by the way, was one of the main reasons Obamacare failed in one of its core promises -- universal coverage; the law drove up premiums so much because it required people to carry lots of coverage for things they didn’t need, and it became cost prohibitive for them).
Speaking of premium increases, a recently released report from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Obamacare, found that between 2013 and 2017, the law increased average premiums by an astounding 105 percent; again, a key pledge by Democrats and former President Obama in selling the law to voters was that it would lower premiums by an average of $2,500 a year:
https://youtu.be/66bgpRRSDD4
“Obamacare has failed to control costs. It certainly failed to deliver on the repeated promise of lowering the average family premium by $2,500,” the Washington Examiner noted. “And while the list of covered services in plans today might be longer than before, we should recognize that not everyone wants or needs such robust (and costly) coverage.”
And while the CBO in 2009 projected that health premiums would rise, it only projected a rise of 10 to 13 percent, not the doubling of rates we’ve seen.
The Affordable Care Act is collapsing. It is harming tens of millions of Americans. Its rejection of the free market is preventing too many people from receiving timely quality care, even if they have ‘health coverage.’ For lawmakers to use a bogus CBO projection as a reason to do nothing about Obamacare is dishonest and unacceptable.
Stay more informed at Medicine.news and BigGovernment.news.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
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