CBO Predictions About Senate Health Care Bill are Deeply Flawed

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office published its estimate of the Senate’s draft health care legislation, the Better Care Reconciliation Act. Democrats are trumpeting the claim that under the GOP bill, 22 million fewer people will have coverage than under Obamacare in 2026. But the CBO’s estimates are deeply flawed.

If you want to understand the utter absurdity of the CBO’s predictions of health insurance coverage under GOP health care proposals, all you have to do is look at the three major GOP health care bills from the last two years: The Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act (H.R. 3762), the American Health Care Act, and the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

Even though these three bills spend vastly different sums on trying to cover the uninsured, the end result—in the CBO’s mind—seems to always be the same.