Contributors

Showing posts with label CBO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CBO. Show all posts

Monday, April 21, 2014

The President's Victory Lap

Last week, the president announced that 8 million people had enrolled in the online exchange during the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act. Juxtaposed with the CBO's data which details how the ACA will be $100 billion dollars lower than expected and that 35 percent of the enrollees are under 35 this is remarkably good news that no one thought was possible after the botched roll out of the web site.

So, it's understandable that the president took a victory lap and wondered, “I find it strange that the Republican position on this law is still stuck in the same place that it has always been. They still can’t bring themselves to admit that the Affordable Care Act is working. They said nobody would sign up; they were wrong about that. They said it would be unaffordable for the country; they were wrong about that.”

Well, Mr. President, it's because they are 12 year old boys who can't stand to be wrong. Worse for them, we are starting to see stories like this.

And even bolder ones like this. 

Of course, these are the same folks who predicted just a few weeks ago that the Senate would fall to the GOP so take it all with a boulder of salt. It's going to all depend who the candidates are and we don't know that yet. If the GOP can't dampen the far right fervor of the base that decides the candidates in the primaries, they will lose their chances at the Senate.

In addition, I think there has been sufficient warning given to the Democrats to use the same get out the vote mechanisms that helped the president win in 2012. Combine this with the realities of millions of newly insured people who will vote this fall and all the doom predicted for the Democrats washes away. I think it's time to ask a serious question of the Republicans.

Are they really going to run on a platform of taking away people's health care?

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Still No Obamacare Boiling Pit of Sewage In Which We Will All Roil and Scream

The CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation released a series of new estimates Monday on the law’s costs and the number of people it will cover. Here are the numbers and main points:
  • Insurance premiums under Obamacare are projected to rise less than 3 percent in 2015, a smaller-than-expected jump as the health insurance exchanges enter their second year.
  • 12 million more Americans will have health coverage in 2014 than would have been the case without the ACA
  • Coverage through the law will cost the federal government about $5 billion less than expected this year.
  • The law’s 10-year cost for the coverage provisions is pegged at $1.383 trillion — $104 billion less than prior calculations. Both figures are lower than prior estimates mostly because the CBO and JCT anticipate premium subsidies being smaller.
  • The budget estimates now project premiums to be about 15 percent lower in 2016 than initial projections four years ago.

SMALLER premium rises? Really? That's not what the folks are telling me inside the bubble.