WASHINGTON — The Congressional Budget Office report on a Republican health care bill set off an intense reaction in Washington, and some on both sides of the debate are playing loose with the facts. The Congressional Budget Office is respected for nonpartisan rigor in its estimates of the costs and impacts of legislation. CBO’s neutrality has been valued by both parties — though not always at the same time. It depends whose ox is being gored.
A look at statements in the debate and how they compare with the CBO’s estimates and the underlying facts:
TRUMP: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” — To The Washington Post, Jan. 15.
CBO: It estimates the bill would leave 14 million fewer people insured in the first year, 24 million fewer by 2026. In following years the main reason for a drop in the number of insured would be that the Republican bill scales back Medicaid for low-income Americans. Altogether, CBO estimates 52 million people would be uninsured by 2026, a vast distance from “insurance for everybody.”
SEAN SPICER, White House press secretary, Tuesday: “Having a card and having coverage that when you walk into a doctor’s office has a deductible of $15,000, $20,000 a year isn’t coverage. That’s a car. That doesn’t get you the care you need.”
THE FACTS: He’s wrong about deductibles under Obama’s law.
Out-of-pocket expenses for consumers are limited. Deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance together can’t exceed $7,150 this year for an individual plan sold through HealthCare.gov or similar state markets. For a family plan it’s $14,300. After that, the insurance plan pays the full cost of covered benefits.
REP. NANCY PELOSI, House Democratic leader, on Republican reaction to the CBO: “Some of them are trying to pin a rose on this report and make it sound like it’s a good thing and the others of them are trying to discredit the CBO, but it’s completely wrong, completely wrong. … Numbers are quite elegant things, you know. They speak very clearly.” — Comments to reporters Monday.
THE FACTS: Democrats have not hesitated to attack this messenger when its conclusions have not suited them. In 2014, Pelosi did not consider CBO’s numbers “elegant,” or correct, when they forecast job losses from a Democratic effort to raise the minimum wage. She accused the CBO of making arguments that “contradict the consensus among hundreds of America’s top economists” and said it “ignored new perspectives in the wide array of analysis on the minimum wage.”
TRUMP: People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better… lower numbers, much lower deductibles.”
CBO: It says cost-sharing payments in the individual market, including deductibles, “would tend to be higher than those anticipated under current law.” Cost-sharing subsidies would be repealed in 2020, “significantly increasing out-of-pocket costs for nongroup (private) insurance for many lower-income enrollees.”