2017 Mar 14^th

Our Health and Human Services Secretary, Dr. Tom Price, is a most unhappy camper. Dr. Price was so enthusiastic about the splendid replacement for that awful Obamacare program, but that was then. The Obamacare replacement Price was pushing would have meant scuttling those onerous tax increases that helped to pay some of the freight for low income Obamacare beneficiaries. Those tax increases were taking an additional 4.7 percent from the incomes of folks making just a few million a year. All good conservatives should be happy to see the end of those surtaxes.

 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has evaluated this new health insurance program. Remember that the CBO is supposed to be a politically neutral evaluator of whatever they are asked to evaluate. Speaker Ryan and his buddies were already dissing the CBO even before they came out with their evaluation. They pointed out that the CBO missed a prediction about an aspect of Obamacare; they failed to mention that the CBO was closer than any other group making the same prediction.

The Price/Ryan/Trump folks who had, before the fact, dissed the CBO as not being credible, was not prepared for the catastrophic analysis the CBO gave their Obamacare replacement. CBOs analysis predicted that within ten years 24 million people would lose their health coverage. Even for Republicans, this looked like a non-starter. As you can imagine this CBO prediction created quite a kerfuffle. Naturally, there was a pushback by Tom Price. Dr. Price claimed that the CBO did not take into consideration any number of special circumstances that would have modified their prediction.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price criticized the CBO’s numbers as “just not believable” on Monday while admitting that he hadn’t even read the CBO report. “The fact of the matter is, if you look at that, it’s virtually impossible to have that number occur. We are not certain – again, we haven’t been able to read the report.” We haven’t read the report but we know it isn’t believable. This is a Trump appointee. What did you expect?

As it happens, Tom Price was an enthusiastic supporter of the new CBO head. Keith Hall.  He said, “Keith Hall will bring an impressive level of economic expertise and experience to the Congressional Budget Office. Throughout his career, he has served in both the public and private sector, under presidents of both parties, and in roles that make him well-suited to lead the CBO. In particular, during his time at the U.S. International Trade Commission, Dr. Hall has worked on providing Congress with non-partisan economic analyses – a role similar to the responsibilities he will now assume as CBO director. His vast understanding of economic and labor market policy will be invaluable to the work of CBO and the important roll it will continue to play as Congress seeks to enact policies that support a healthy and growing economy.”

And then look what Dr. Hall did to Price’s program. You just can’t trust some economists.