Forecasts: ObamaCare advocates tout a new Congressional Budget Office report saying that ObamaCare’s repeal would boost the deficit. But read the actual report. It tells a far different, more disturbing tale about this law.
The report found that repealing ObamaCare lock, stock and barrel would boost the deficit by $353 billion. That was enough for news outlets like CNN to report that repeal would “blow out the deficit.”
Actually, given that the CBO expects deficits to total $7.2 trillion over those same years, the increase is more like a rounding error than a blowout.
But what the CBO’s latest analysis does is provide three more reasons ObamaCare is a bad deal for the American public.
• It’s bad for the economy. President Obama sold ObamaCare as a major boost to the economy. But the CBO says ObamaCare is hurting the economy and that its repeal would boost the nation’s GDP by 0.7% from 2021 to 2025. Based on the CBO’s own GDP forecasts, that translates into $886 billion. When you account for these economic effects, ObamaCare’s impact on the deficit shrinks to just $137 billion.
• It relies on phony accounting. The only way the CBO can claim that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit by any amount is by assuming — as it must — that the roughly $800 billion in Medicare provider cuts all take effect. But that’s a fantasy. The Medicare Board of Trustees says these payment cuts aren’t realistic over the long term. And Obama just signed a law repealing Congress’ last attempt to impose deep cuts to doctors.
• Past forecasts have been wildly wrong. Back in 2011, the CBO said ObamaCare would cut the 2016-21 deficit a total of $109 billion. Now it says it will boost deficits by $109 billion over those same years, once you factor in the harm ObamaCare will do to the economy.
To its credit, the CBO admits its latest forecast should be taken with heaping grains of salt. “All of the resulting estimates,” it notes right upfront, “are subject to substantial uncertainty.”
Yes, the CBO says that repealing ObamaCare would increase the number of uninsured. But as we’ve pointed out here many times, there are other, far better ways to boost insurance coverage that won’t balloon deficits, wreck Medicare and destroy the economy.
Getting rid of ObamaCare is just the first step.
