Name:   phil - Subject:   Changing the subject once again Date:   5/25/2017 4:03:09 PM

no but we can smell chit and know what it looks like 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/05/25/no-the-republican-healthcare-bill-would-not-cause-23-million-people-to-lose-insurance-n2331434

When Obamacare first passed, CBO anticipated that by 2016, 21 million Americans would enroll in the law's exchanges. When 2016 rolled around, the real number was just about 10 million. A massive miss. Remarkably, CBO relies on its revised 2016 "baseline" in its new calculations -- but the 2016 baseline was also off by millions.  By their own admission. Despite these demonstrable misfires, CBO is still using verifiably-disproven, Obamacare-friendly estimates as the basis for comparison:

That's the aforementioned magical thinking, and it's indefensible when there's real data available to plug into the calculations.  So when you take away the people who already don't have coverage under Obamacare but who CBO has decided would hypothetically do so in the years ahead, and substitute actual enrollment numbers for CBO's outdated and disproven projections, only a few million of the "23 million" would actually lose existing coverage -- and these people would receive tax credits to purchase new plans, many of which would cost less under the AHCA. We should also point out that millions who'd "lose" coverage would do so voluntarily, affirmatively choosing not to buy a product that the government is no longer forcing them to purchase. Beyond that, conservative healthcare wonk Philip Klein also finds some of CBO's additional analysis to be puzzling:

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/10/25/october-surprise-consumers-democrats-slammed-by-obamacare-failures-n2236794?utm_source=TopBreakingNewsCarousel&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=BreakingNewsCarousel

Aetna Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini escalated his criticism of the Affordable Care Act, saying Obamacare’s markets are nearing failure as premiums climb and healthier individuals drop out. “It is in a death spiral,” Bertolini said in a video interview with the Wall Street Journal that aired Wednesday on the newspaper’s website. He predicted that more insurers will drop out of the market for 2018, following Humana Inc.’s decision to quit Obamacare entirely for next year. Aetna, too, is mulling whether to further reduce its presence in the markets set up by the ACA. The company cut its footprint to four states for this year, from 15, after losing about $450 million on sales of ACA plans last year. Bertolini has been saying for months that the ACA’s markets are deteriorating. In October, he said that rising rates would push healthy people away from Obamacare, leaving insurers with sicker customers, and forcing premiums even higher. The increasing burden of medical costs as fewer and fewer healthy customers enroll are among the conditions that create an insurance death spiral.