Greenbeard
Gold Member
The justification given in the article for identifying that estimate as a lie (which, frankly, doesn't even make sense as the offending quote is about Obama's proposal in his September 2009 speech, which presumably most people understand isn't exactly what came out of Congress later that year) is a CBO estimate of discretionary spending related to the law which supposedly hadn't been accounted for. Except that two days after releasing that estimate, the CBO clarified that indeed most of it had already been accounted for: "Thus, CBO’s discretionary baseline, which assumes that 2010 appropriations are extended with adjustments for anticipated inflation, already accounts for much of the potential discretionary spending under PPACA. In addition, there are a number of other items that could overlap some or even by a considerable amount with current law activities assumed in CBO’s baseline."
I think my favorite item in the list is #7, the other cost argument. We're told two things:
1) First that the CBO estimated that individual market premiums would be higher in a few years. Which is true and it isn't. An apples-to-apples comparison of plan costs before and after reform actually shows that prices for equivalent plans will decrease. But a great many plans in the individual market right now offer shoddy coverage, which they won't after the reforms go into effect. The end result is that the the price of the average plan will rise as the quality of coverage offered increases. So that's true. But CBO estimates that about 80% of the people in the exchanges will be receiving subsidies. CBO tells us that the "amount that subsidized enrollees would pay for nongroup coverage would be roughly 56 percent to 59 percent lower, on average, than the nongroup premiums charged under current law."
In other words, the vast majority of people in the exchanges are going to be getting substantially better coverage (which will overall cost less than that same coverage would cost if offered in the non-group market today) and they'll personally be paying substantially less for it than they're paying right now for their, on average, inferior coverage.
2) We're told that in July 2009 Doug Elemendorf testified that the reform bills would bend the cost curve the wrong way. From the very article they link to:
And it's true, in July 2009 those provisions weren't in the legislation. But they are in the bill signed by the President last March. Let me repeat that: the things Elmendorf suggested in July 2009 were necessary for bending the cost curve were put into the final bill. Using an outdated article to make the argument that Elmendorf says this law will bend the cost curve upwards is either shoddy research or outright dishonesty.
Last edited:
)
Is that a little dangling carrot I see?
