White House Strikes at CBO Over GOP's Obamacare Replacement
Source: U.S. News & World Report
The White House began casting doubts on the Congressional Budget Office's ability to accurately score House GOP legislation designed to repeal Obamacare, launching a preemptive shot Wednesday against the nonpartisan agency tasked with analyzing the economic impact of the replacement effort.
The CBO has begun analyzing the American Health Care Act, and Republican lawmakers are hoping to be provided with an estimate by the end of this week. But White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the CBO's past track record in forecasting the cost and coverage of the Affordable Care Act has undermined its authority.
"If you're looking at the CBO for accuracy, you're looking at the wrong place," Spicer said. "Look at what the CBO's record is on Obamacare. It's vastly off. They're way off in terms of the millions."
While the CBO projected four years ago that 24 million Americans would enroll in Obamacare through its exchanges by 2016, the actual number only totaled 11 million by last August. Obama administration officials explained away the gaping discrepancy by saying that analysts mistakenly thought employers would direct their workers to enroll in the exchanges, which allow those without coverage to buy government-subsidized insurance, instead of continuing to provide health care themselves.
Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-strikes-at-cbo-over-gops-obamacare-replacement/ar-AAo2j75
How long before Trump goes on a Fake News tirade directed at the CBO? Perhaps Republicans will threaten to simply dissolve the office and replace it with Breitbart/Fox News staffers.
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