Politico has reported on a study conducted by President Donald Trump's White House Office of Management and Budget into how many more Americans will be left without insurance under TrumpCare: what the bill, the American Health Care Act, to replace the affordable care act, or Obamacare, has started to be called. The White House study shows 26 million people uninsured under TrumpCare, while a previous report, by the Congressional Budget Office, predicted that 24 million would lose health coverage under the new legislation.
Under the American Health Care Act the OMB is said to see three million currently receiving insurance through employer plans losing coverage, along with six million individual market subscribers, and 17 million Medicaid subscribers.
John Iadarola, with The Young Turks, noted that Republicans were" quick to criticize" the numbers that first came from the CBO, saying that the report contained "flawed assumptions," and a political bias. Director of the CBO, Keith Hall, was nominated by former Republican President George W. Bush to serve as commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mr. Iadarola seemingly imagined Republicans asking, "Who trusts that guy that's running the CBO?"
White House TrumpCare study undercuts CBO findings
Iadarola described the CBO Affordable Care Act replacement report's "arguments" being "undercut," by the White House itself. Cenk Uygur, founder of TYT, pointed out that the director of the OMB is Mick Mulvaney, "Trump's main guy." Iadarola described a practice in use at the OMB involving "dynamic scoring," which a January 2015 White House blog by Shaun Donovan explained injects "the total size of the economy" into budget estimates, and gives House members the opportunity to "adopt legislation that increases Federal deficits, while masking its costs."
TYT reports that Michael Dubke, a communications director with the Trump administration, has responded to the report, seemingly acknowledging existence of the document, stating that it isn't "an analysis of the bill in any way whatsoever." The director was said to state that the numbers were a result of the OMB attempting to "predict" the data the CBO would report.
John Iadarola pointed out that Brookings Institute research attempting to predict the same data resulted in much lower numbers of uninsured Americans.
Speaking on CNN, Mick Mulvaney expressed surprise with media reports of "damage control" on the part of Republicans. The OMB director stated that the CBO is "terrible" at predicting insurance coverage rates, and that both reports ended with conclusions he expected.
He characterized the CBO report as being full of "bad assumptions" and "bizarre numbers." David Sirota, with TYT, noted a view that the CBO "overestimated" the number of Americans that would gain coverage the Affordable Care Act, and that they are again overestimating the number of people that will lose coverage under the American Health Care Act.
He asked for an explanation of whether the CBO's bias is up or down.
Cenk Uygur compliments Chris Cuomo
Cenk Uygur noted the shrewd political decision to paint the CBO as the "Obama guys," when, in fact, the director has been favored by Republicans. He also focused on Mulvaney's assertion that the OMB was merely attempting to predict the CBO's numbers. Pointing to the Politico report, Uygur cited the publication's view that the "analysis intended to assess the coverage and spending outcomes," seemingly in contradiction with Mick Mulvaney's statement. Mr. Uygur panned the veracity of Mulvaney's claim, and stated "they really did the analysis, and it came out to 26 million."
When CNN anchor Chris Cuomo pressed Mick Mulvaney on the existence of the Politico document, the director suggested that it may have been based on a document drafted in January, which included a forecast of coverage losses of a TrumpCare "repeal with no replace" near 20 million. Cenk Uygur characterized Mr. Cuomo's questioning as "great."
