Friday, January 28, 2011

Democrats’ “War” against the CBO on Premiums

The Administration’s “report” on premiums is out, and as expected the survey quotes misleading Congressional Budget Office data to claim that premiums would be 20 percent lower under the health care law.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from page 7 of the report:

Together, these savings range from 14 to 20 percent. CBO also assumed that individuals and families would have, on average, coverage that is more comprehensive than what they have now, meaning that the savings would offset by higher premiums due to better coverage. It is important to note that this benefit enhancement is a choice, not a requirement.

The report acknowledges that premiums would go up due to individuals buying richer benefit packages, but claims that these decisions will be entirely voluntary.  Unfortunately for the Administration, however, that is NOT what the CBO stated in its analysis.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from page 7 of the CBO’s November 2009 report:

Average premiums would be 27 percent to 30 percent higher because a greater amount of coverage would be obtained. In particular, the average insurance policy in this market would cover a substantially larger share of enrollees’ costs for health care (on average) and a slightly wider range of benefits. Those expansions would reflect both the minimum level of coverage (and related requirements) specified in the proposal and people’s decisions to purchase more extensive coverage in response to the structure of subsidies.

In other words, CBO admitted that while some Americans would choose to purchase additional coverage voluntarily, many Americans would face higher premiums due to the mandates contained in the law.  For the Administration to claim that “this benefit is a choice, not a requirement” in all cases is COMPLETELY FALSE.

During the last several weeks, liberal commentators and health law supporters have criticized Republicans’ “war” on the Congressional Budget Office, even though Republicans haven’t criticized the professionalism of CBO’s analysts, but rather the assumptions that the Democrat majority forced CBO to presume when scoring health care legislation.  But now that Democrats have both twisted and ignored critical points in the CBO’s analysis to make completely false statements about the law’s effect on premiums, will those same liberals have the same level of outrage about the misleading allegations in the Administration’s “report?”