Krugman: new CBO estimate is good news [View All]

[ProSense]

The CBO on insurance premiums

The Congressional Budget Office has released its much-awaited estimate on how the Senate health care bill would affect premiums. It’s good news from the point of view of reform advocates: premiums would stay about the same for people with group coverage, while falling significantly for most of those in the small-group or individual markets. Jon Gruber has crunched the numbers, and produces this convenient chart (via Yglesias):




But here’s the thing: senior Republican politicians suffer from reading comprehension. (To be fair, the CBO report is written in a remarkably elliptical style). Several have already claimed that the report shows that premiums will rise.

And they probably won’t get called on it. More than that, in today’s Beltway, where David Broder can say that he can’t find an expert who believes the Senate bill is deficit neutral when the Congressional Budget Office says it is, the good news in this report may well just be ignored.

Anyway, for what it’s worth the CBO has now given the Senate bill a clean bill of, um, health on both its budget impact and its impact on families.