Orszag response to CBO report: Supports what Obama has said all along

[babylonsister]

http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2009/07/orszag...

Orszag response to CBO report: Supports what Obama has said all along

By GottaLaff


Peter Orszag responds to the CBO report I posted about earlier. Ahem, not so fast there, Politico:

This morning, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed proposals to shift more decision-making out of politics and toward a body like the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) put forward by the Administration. CBO noted that this type of approach could lead to significant long-term savings in federal spending on health care and that the available evidence implies that a substantial share of spending on health care contributes little, if anything, to the overall health of the nation. This supports what President Obama has said all along: we can reduce waste and unnecessary spending without reducing quality of care and benefits.

The point of the proposal, however, was never to generate savings over the next decade. (Indeed, under the Administration’s approach, the IMAC system would not even begin to make recommendations until 2015.) Instead, the goal is to provide a mechanism for improving quality of care for beneficiaries and reducing costs over the long term. In other words, in the terminology of our belt-and-suspenders approach to a fiscally responsible health reform, the IMAC is a game changer not a scoreable offset.

With regard to the long-term impact, CBO suggested that the proposal, with several specific tweaks that would strengthen its operations, could generate significant savings. <...>

The bottom line is that it is very rare for CBO to conclude that a specific legislative proposal would generate significant long-term savings so it is noteworthy that, with some modifications, CBO reached such a conclusion with regard to the IMAC concept.

A final note is worth underscoring. As a former CBO director, I can attest that CBO is sometimes accused of a bias toward exaggerating costs and underestimating savings. Unfortunately, parts of today’s analysis from CBO could feed that perception. <...>

{I}t is also the case that (for good reason) CBO has restricted itself to qualitative, not quantitative, analyses of long-term effects from legislative proposals. In providing a quantitative estimate of long-term effects without any analytical basis for doing so, CBO seems to have overstepped.


Read the whole thing at link...

The headline of my earlier post was lifted from the Politico piece: "CBO deals new blow to health plan". Easy to understand, dramatic, and memorable. Now then, isn't that just like the Rushpublics?

Here we go again. We have the usual challenge: Refute, explain, repeat, and make it easy to understand, and hopefully, memorable.

This is in response to this:

Politico: "CBO deals new blow to health plan"
Posted by jocapo


Has the CBO scored Single Payer - HR 676?

Link to article: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25415.html

[MoJoWorkin]

1. Orszag's reply to CBO also found here....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/blog/09/07/25/CBOandIMAC/

I despise how the media in general, and Politico in particular, twists everything to put Obama in the worst light possible. I HATE THEM!

[ellenfl]

2. k&r eom