Doubled counting involved in what? I've said multiple times now that the claims of double counting refer only to rhetoric, not the actual deficit projections. Your quote from the CBO explicitly supports that, as it criticizes descriptions ("To describe...would essentially double-count"), namely those that imply the deficit reduction will be higher than the CBO projected. If you think the CBO's deficit reduction estimates should be lower because savings were counted in two places, show it in the score (numbers).
I have heard of selective blindness before, but this is the worst case I have ever actually encountered.
Tell me something, how do you go from "The key point is that the savings to the HI trust fund under the PPACA would be received by the government only once, so they cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and, at the same time, pay for current spending on other parts of the legislation or on other programs," to "To describe...would essentially double-count."
The administration is counting the savings from the Medicare Trust fund, and they are also counting it as part of the PPACA. Since the PPACA is specifically written, and scored, with those Medicare savings incorporated as part of "paying" for the PPACA the score is obviously affected by it.
You made your choice, you have branded yourself a liar.
That's correct, you can't do that. Yet the premise in this thread is that the CBO's score does do that. And, of course, it does not.
No, the thread is about the PPACA being a budget busting bill. As the double counting is only a small part of the way the score for the PPACA was finalized, we can actually ignore it and still make our point. You just chose to focus on a minute portion of the bill problem in the hope that no one would notice your attempt to obnubilate. (Thanks for the word PC)
Guess what, the reforms to the 1099 filing have already changed the score of the PPACA, as did the doc fix that was integral to the claim that the cost of this bill was under $1 trillion.
CBO uses unified budget rules; money is money, it's in one giant pot, and thus it can't be counted twice as being in two separate compartments simultaneously. The administration's rhetoric sometimes strayed into trust fund accounting rules territory, in which federal money does exist in different compartments and exists for distinct purposes. CBO was asked about this and responded with that memo, pointing out that indeed you can't do that. And lo, they did not.
Yada, yada, yada.
Guess what, everyone on this board who is capable of rational thought recognizes your attempt to blow smoke for the pathetic thing it actually is. Even if you are entirely correct that this is nothing more than rhetoric from the administration (which I could disprove without any effort whatever) it is actually irrelevent to the point that the PPACA is going to bust the budget.
Crawl back to your boss and inform him that you have totally failed in selling his, or her, lies here.
The timeline of the annual limit phaseout is determined in the statute. Yet the Secretary is granted rulemaking authority to define certain restricted annual benefits and to ensure that access and premiums aren't significantly affected. Given that the latter is impossible for a certain class of plans, the rule establishes a temporary waiver application process.
Again, how does exempting unions, large corporations, small businesses, and entire states, from Obamacare do anything to ensure that the premiums for minimal coverage insurance does not go to high? All it does is ensure that the people who are covered by the companies that receive those waivers do not have access to insurance that meets the new standards.
The rule does not establish any waiver process. The word waiver does not appear anywhere in the law, if it did you would have linked to it and quoted it.
Want to try again?
The most interesting part is imaging a parallel reality where they didn't grant waivers, and thus were harshly criticized for ignoring their mandate to preserve access and protect premiums. I wonder what side you'd come down on in that reality?
I do not find imaging alternate universes vaguely interesting. I do, however, enjoy imagining alternate realities where idiots do not attempt to argue impossible conditions. I also imagine a universe where the government is not afraid to admit that a law that was cobbled together, never read, and then shoved down people's throat contains errors that, as written, make it impossible to enforce.
Believe it or not, I would respect a government like that.
I take it you haven't actually looked at the criteria for receiving an annual limit waiver recently.
What does it matter what rule that HHS is using to describe criteria for an exemption that is illegal in the first place?
