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Except that's not how it happens at all

Static analysts at CBO predictably claim Senate health bill will throw 22 million off insurance



The Congressional Budget Office is the media's go-to source for analysis of all proposed bill in Congress. Why? Because the CBO is populated by Keynesian liberals who have no understanding at all of the dynamics of markets - just like virtually everyone in the media. That's why the media loves the CBO's "scores" of proposed tax cuts. They always assume the tax rate cuts will devastate revenue to the Treasury and have no other impact on anything. So it's no surprise that the CBO's analysis of the Republican health care bills have been along the same lines. The media are pretty excited today because the CBO has declared that the latest Senate bill will cause 22 million people to lose their health insurance:
Twenty-two million Americans would lose insurance over the next decade under the healthcare bill drafted by U.S. Senate Republicans, a nonpartisan congressional office said on Monday, likely making it more difficult for the already-fraught legislation to win support for speedy passage.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to reconcile the demands of moderate Republicans concerned about people losing their insurance with those of conservative senators who say the bill does not do enough to repeal Obamacare. The assessment by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that an additional 15 million people would be uninsured by 2018 likely complicates McConnell's goal of scheduling a vote on the bill before the July 4 recess that starts at the end of this week. Republicans have a 52-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate and Democrats are united in opposition. McConnell can lose just two Republican senators, relying on Vice President Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote. "If you are on the fence ... this CBO score didn't help you, so I think it's going to be harder to get to 50, not easier,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said of the bill's prospects.

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You can always count on Lindsey Graham to know what will get him media coverage. There are all kinds of problems, of course, not only with the CBO's analysis but with the way it's being talked about. Let's start with the basic assumption behind it - that the more people who are reliant on health insurance policies, the better. This has been the presumption of Democrats for as long as anyone can remember, that the state of health care is best when as many people as possible are dependent on third parties to pay their bills. In fact, many people prefer to take charge of their own health care spending, which is why the Democrats felt the need to put an individual mandate in ObamaCare. They know there are a lot of people who don't have health insurance because they don't want it. They think it's a bad economic value and they prefer to take other approaches to the management of their health. For sure, there will be many people who drop health insurance once ObamaCare is gone, because they never wanted it in the first place and only bought it because of the mandate penalty. That's a feature, not a bug. It's the return of people's freedom to do what they want with their money and their health. As for those who signed on for the Medicaid expansion and might no longer qualify once the expansion is rolled back, they will have access to tax credits that they can use to make other arrangements. Or they could change their approaches to their own lives and find ways to earn more money so they can afford to either buy their own health insurance or simply pay their bills themselves.

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Democrats, the media and the CBO's Keynesians assume that someone with a low income today will always have a low income, and will need government help for the rest of their lives. If you're that person, do you appreciate that assumption about you? Do you share it? Do you simply assume you will never make much money and you'll always need the government to give you health insurance on the cheap? If you think that little of your own potential, that probably explains why you vote Democrat. But the neither the House bill nor the Senate bill decrees that anyone can't get health insurance. It changes certain options for how to get it, but it leaves plenty of others, and it also restores to you the option of not buying it if you don't want it. That's what the CBO will never understand. There are other ways to get something besides getting it from the government either cheap or free. The CBO has no faith in any of you to make that happen. Are you the kind of person who is going to prove them right?


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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