CBO report is “an indication of how many people would leave Obamacare if given the choice”

CBO report is “an indication of how many people would leave Obamacare if given the choice” - @SpeakerRyan
https://t.co/TYtDSnZOwb

— Ways and Means (@WaysandMeansGOP) June 27, 2017

CBO: Fully repealing Obamacare means less disruption to your health coverage and costs

Liberals are hyping a CBO report in hopes of derailing Obamacare repeal. There's just one BIG problem... pic.twitter.com/iyWFqHavhn

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) January 19, 2017

Covered a lot of ground with @charlierose last night, including repealing #Obamacare and tax reform. https://t.co/H8xI2Ue6bi

— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) January 19, 2017

Congressional Budget Office: Bill to gut ObamaCare would save half a trillion dollars

CBO: Bill to gut ObamaCare would save half a trillion dollars: https://t.co/cLqbVGBCBP pic.twitter.com/jSTo6B0gEr

— The Hill (@thehill) January 4, 2016

Physicians have all the power. Opt out of #ABIM @NOMOCNOW and they will go bankrupt @AAPSonline @CharlesPKroll @kksheld

— Ari Kostadaras,MD (@AKostadaras) January 5, 2016

Attn seniors: Obama wants you to pick up 73% of ObamaCare's costs by 2025

Attn seniors: Obama wants you to pick up 73% of ObamaCare's costs by 2025. http://t.co/HUIyqdMVQB #tlot #tcot pic.twitter.com/2wWEWJE76a

— IBDeditorials (@IBDeditorials) June 23, 2015

Anyone who thinks ObamaCare will cut the deficit over the next decade should look at Page 11 of the latest Congressional Budget Office report.

McConnell to fast-track ObamaCare tax repeal: http://t.co/rKLPmvHwDx pic.twitter.com/jhYTApse0P

— The Hill (@thehill) June 23, 2015

How many Drs will not comply with ICD10 on Oct 1?It's gonna hit the fan when insurance is revealed a a sham.Your Dr can't see you anymore.

— Kris Held,MD (@kksheld) June 23, 2015

CBO still refuses to score Obamacare, ignores 15 tax hikes in healthcare law

◼ The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this week released their annual Budget and Economic Outlook which sets the budget baselines and estimates for the whole year.

Buried in Appendix B of the report is CBO's attempt to provide an updated score of Obamacare. But that's not what they did. They only scored the "coverage provisions" of the law, ignoring some fifteen tax increases which are also a part of Obamacare and its cost to taxpayers.

Here's what the report says about its half score:

"Those estimates address only the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA and do not reflect all of the act’s budgetary effects. Because the provisions of the ACA that relate to health insurance coverage established entirely new programs or components of programs and because those provisions have mostly just begun to be implemented,CBO and JCT have produced separate estimates of the effects of the provisions as part of the baseline process. By contrast, because the provisions of the ACA that do not relate directly to health insurance coverage generally modified existing federal programs (such as Medicare) or made various changes to the tax code, determining what would have happened since the enactment of the ACA had the law not been in effect is becoming increasingly difficult. The incremental budgetary effects of those noncoverage provisions are embedded in CBO’s baseline projections for those programs and tax revenues, respectively, but they cannot all be separately identified using the agency’s normal procedures. As a result, CBO does not produce estimates of the budgetary effects of the ACA as a whole as part of the baseline process."

This is just another version of "we can't score it anymore" that CBO Director Doug Elmendorf (and his Gruber-gate methodology on Obamacare) has become known for.

List of tax hikes ignored in the CBO half-score of Obamacare

-3.8 percent surtax on investment income
-Hike in top Medicare payroll tax rate to 3.8 percent
-Medicine cabinet tax
-Additional surtax on health savings account (HSA) distributions
-Cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs)
-Medical device tax
-High medical bills tax
-Tanning tax
-Tax on employer retiree drug coverage in Medicare
-Charitable hospital tax
-Pharmaceutical manufacturers tax
-Health insurance tax
-Tax on executive compensation in the health sector
-"Black liquor" tax hike
-Codification of "economic substance doctrine"

CBO still refuses to score Obamacare, ignores 15 tax hikes in healthcare law: http://t.co/GniqUpwPhz

— Grover Norquist (@GroverNorquist) January 30, 2015

The six major contracts for http://t.co/lnsYiLe6EE grew in costs from $464 million to $824 million, says @NKaeding: http://t.co/e8Qv8CEf9z

— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) January 30, 2015

President Obama's new budget will bust budget caps by $74 billion. No way. See CBO report. Sobering read. https://t.co/EP9hdZ7ixf.

— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) January 30, 2015

This may strike you as a bit esoteric, but it's important.

Herman Cain: For years, Democrats have manipulated the way the CBO "scores" tax and spending bills, and it looks like this is about to end. This should lead to much better economic legislation.

◼ GOP getting ready to eliminate dishonest 'scoring' of spending and tax bills - Cain TV

You may not know a lot about the Congressional Budget Office or its "scoring" of tax and spending bills, but it carries a lot of weight in Washington - and that's often a problem given the rules congressional Democrats have imposed on the economists who run the CBO.

When Congress proposes a spending and/or tax bill, the CBO develops a "score" of the bill that's designed to show its impact on the budget and deficits. Now that can be a useful thing if it's done honestly, but under Democrat-imposed rules, it's not. The CBO has to score the bills under the assumption that the numbers Congress gives it are accurate, and it makes no provision for the likelihood that a major change in spending or tax laws will impact people's economic behavior.

So if the Democrats want to raise taxes by $10 billion in a year, the CBO has to assume this will automatically raise exactly $10 billion in revenue. We all know life doesn't work that way, of course, because people make adjustments to new costs imposed on them. It's like me raising the price of my books by $5 each and assuming the sales wouldn't be affected in any way by the higher price. That's nuts. Of course they would. (Otherwise I would obviously raise them through the roof. Why not?) But this is how the Democrats have been making the CBO do things for years, which makes it all the more maddening that the political class and many pundits (including many conservatives) treat pronouncements from the CBO as if they are an unassailable look into the future, rather than some Keynesian economist's wild guess about what's going to happen.

Thankfully, it looks like the new Republican Congress is finally going to change these rules... KEEP READING

Why didn't anybody notice this?: The Obamacare hit on the nation’s fiscal health

◼ ‘Liberating’ workers from their jobs will weaken economic growth - Washington Times

Almost lost in the polemics over Obamacare’s depressing impact on employment was the troubling overall outlook presented recently by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Prospects for both the budget and the economy in general are declining, in the CBO’s view, with potential consequences severe enough that they demand further attention.

Due to the progressive nature of our income tax system, the actual number is likely somewhat past the midpoint, so perhaps 72 or 73 percent of Americans are actually receiving more from the government than they pay in with only a bit more than one quarter of the country actually paying more in than they are getting back.

◼ Romney Was Wrong About The 47 Percent, The Problem Is Much Worse - Jeffrey Dorfman/Forbes

The Congressional Budget Office is just out with a new report that shows exactly how much income redistribution the government is accomplishing. Recently, liberal politicians and the media have been focused on income inequality, but they almost always use data on pre-tax and pre-transfer income before the government’s income redistribution programs have done their work. Looking at the data after income taxes, after refundable tax credits, and after government transfer programs tells quite a different story.

CBO: Obamacare will cost 7 million workers healthcare coverage

◼ President Obama's health care law will push 7 million people out of their job-based insurance coverage — nearly twice the previous estimate, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.

CBO said that this year's tax cuts have changed the incentives for businesses and made it less attractive to pay for insurance, meaning fewer will decide to do so. Instead, they'll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade.

◼ PLUS: Amnesty would add $2 trillion to the long-term cost of Obamacare... - Caroline May/Daily Caller

◼ The federal health care law could nearly triple premiums for some young and healthy men, according to a forthcoming survey of insurers that singles out a group that might become a major public opinion battleground in the Obamacare wars. - Politico

That’s because the same new insurance market rules that will make coverage more affordable for older and sicker people will make insurance for young and healthier people more expensive.

Most other studies have tried to estimate average premium increases, which have ranged anywhere from negligible to 85 percent and higher. This survey looks at individual examples in specific markets to show the itemized impact of the major Obamacare reforms.

CBO: Obama’s Plan To Tax The Rich Would Reduce Deficit By Zero Dollars…

◼ Sadly, sheeple voters bought into his class warfare nonsense. - Weasel Zippers
◼ How much deficit reduction would Obama’s tax on the rich accomplish? - Conn Carroll/Washington Examiner @conncarroll

Raising taxes on the rich was the cornerstone of President Obama’s reelection campaign. “If we’re serious about reducing the deficit,” Obama told a rally in Columbus, Ohio, on election day, “we’ve got to ask the wealthiest Americans to go back to the tax rates they paid when Bill Clinton was in office.”

But just how much deficit reduction would Obama’s tax hikes on the rich necessarily accomplish?

Nothing, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Letting tax rates rise to Clinton era levels for those families making over $250,000 a year would only raise $824 billion over ten years. That is not even enough revenue to undo the sequester that Obama promised “will not happen” during his final debate with Mitt Romney.