The Washington Post has a useful article savaging the White House’s claim that, under health care “reform”, people will be able to keep their current insurance. Here’s a key passage:
The legislation could also prompt some employers to drop coverage, congressional budget analysts say.
In a report last month on a bill advanced by House Democrats, the Congressional Budget Office said millions of people would gain employment-based coverage and millions would lose it. The CBO estimated that the number of people gaining the coverage would exceed the number of people losing it.
As for the losers, “CBO and the JCT [Joint Committee on Taxation] staff estimate that, in 2016, about 3 million people (including spouses and dependents of workers) who would be covered by an employment-based plan under current law would not have an offer of coverage under the proposal,” the CBO said.
The CBO was defining employment-based coverage to include an unspecified number of people who would obtain coverage through an exchange with a financial contribution from their employer. The CBO analysis left open the possibility that a larger number of people would lose employer-based health benefits in a more familiar sense — coverage procured or provided directly by the employer.
There’s three main points to unpack here:
- The CBO has not said that no one will lose employment-based coverage, only that more will gain it than lose it. In fact, millions will lose it.
- The CBO has not said that people will be able to keep their current plan (in fact, they almost certainly will not). It merely counts those who will keep some kind of employment-based coverage.
- The CBO defines employment-based coverage in a very particular way, distinct from the “more familiar sense.”
Also, although the Post does not point it out, this sort of thing isn’t really part of CBO’s mandate (which is to estimate the budget implications of legislation) and I’m not aware that it has any special competency at it.
(Via Power Line.)
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