The Patriot Post® · CBO Still Can't See Straight on ObamaCare

As Donald Trump’s inauguration looms, the Left and Democrats are pulling out all the stops in concerted efforts to stop him from making good on his campaign promises. Arguably the biggest promise is the repeal and replacement of that disastrous law known as ObamaCare. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a report on last year’s Republican repeal bill (which Barack Obama subsequently vetoed). That bill had no provisions for replacing ObamaCare; it was a political maneuver intended to communicate to the American people that Republicans were serious about ending the law.

Yesterday’s CBO report predicted ObamaCare’s repeal would leave as many as 18 million people without health insurance within two years — and that number would grow to as many as 32 million by the year 2026, due primarily to huge premium increases for health insurance. To put it bluntly, the CBO report reads like a doomsday scenario, and predictably it was just what Democrats wanted to hear. Ignoring the fact that ObamaCare itself is untenable and on the verge of collapse, Democrats would rather tout a problematic report based on old and questionable data, rather than support any attempt to make a better fairer law.

Republicans quickly downplayed the report as having little relevance to the current situation. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) spokesman Ashlee Strong said that the CBO report was “meaningless” and that it “assumes a situation that simply doesn’t exist and that no one in Congress advocates.” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) accused Democrats of being deliberately misleading, saying, “This whole false narrative of all of a sudden having 20 million people get sick because you’re not going to have some sort of solution for them means they are not reading their briefings or they’ve got really subpar people in the marketing department.”

First, it must be noted that this CBO report is based on outdated information. Second, when it comes to ObamaCare, the CBO’s past estimates have never been even remotely accurate. For example, the CBO predicted that by 2010 there would be 21 million people enrolled in the ObamaCare exchange; the actual number ended up being 12 million. The report also doesn’t take into account the fact that Republicans are seeking to both repeal and replace. Since the replacement plan has yet to be introduced there is no data yet by which to compute the potential impact of the new plan, both on insurance costs and the number of individuals insured.

As always with the Left, it’s really not whether the report numbers are valid, but how those numbers can be used to their advantage. For seemingly decades now, Democrats have been much more effective than Republicans at making their case by focusing on the emotional human impact factor rather than on cold stats. Stories of people suffering without a certain law, or if said law is repealed gains wide play. Republicans need to remind America everyday just how bad ObamaCare is by sharing the real life stories of how the law destroyed someone’s small business, how it cost someone their job, how it steps all over religious freedom. These are the real effects of ObamaCare — not potential but actual. Republicans need not be afraid to hit back.