from the Washington post
When Obamacare passed in 2010, the CBO projected a healthy individual market with 23 million people enrolled in exchange plans by this year. The CBO predicted that by 2017, exchange plans would be profitable and annual premium increases low.
The CBO reached these conclusions, in large part, because its model puts significant weight on the individual mandate. The CBO expected millions of relatively young and healthy people to buy exchange plans under government coercion.
But this never happened. Today, there are only 10 million people enrolled in exchange plans — about 60 percent fewer than expected. (Contrary to some claims, this is not because more people have maintained employer plans than the CBO expected; the reduction in employer coverage has been greater than the CBO projected, and overall about 9 million more people are uninsured now than projected.) Absent the projected bounty of young, healthy consumers, health insurers are abandoning the exchanges, leaving a third of American counties with only one insurer to choose from. As insurers continue to flee the exchanges, consumers will face even fewer options next year.
Believe it or not, what you post actually is a great example of why we can trust the CBO with health care cost projections.
Imo, the biggest difference between what the Dems proposed vs the GOP is that with the Dems, the math works out and it makes sense.
With what you posted, the CBO expected X which would yield Y. WHen X didn't happen then Y was not as expected.
This is mathematically sound. It is logical. It makes sense.
What GOP healthcare proposes does not mathematically add up. It is a lot of hand waving a trickle down economics and "just trust us everything will be fine we will fix it later..." GOP is saying things that are just not true in regards to health care, premiums, coverage, etc.
So I will trust the CBO numbers a thousand times more than I trust anything from the GOP on healthcare.
The CBO is a non-partisan board that is trusted for making projections about everything. If you don't trust them on this, then you can't trust them on anything and where does that leave us?
Here is how and why I would not trust the CBO.
If the CBO expected that if X happened and Y happened then Z would happen and cost would be Q.
Then, if X did happen, and Y then happened and Z happened BUT costs ended up being J instead of Q "then" that would be a reason to not trust the CBO.
Do you follow me?
So yeah, based on what you posted, that actually is an argument for why we CAN trust the CBO's projections and numbers...