2020 presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders relaunches his Medicare-for-all health care

[Uncle Joe]

29. In regards to progressive health care reform, the CBO has it shortcomings,

the picture they paint is incomplete.

(snip)

The CBO doesn’t follow the simple logic of only considering something part of the federal budget if it is directly paid for by the federal government. Nor does the CBO follow the basic logic of considering private activity part of the federal budget if it is required by federal law, like via an individual/employer mandate. Instead, the CBO considers health care reform an “essentially government program” if it crosses some arbitrary line of too much regulation.

According to a 2009 CBO paper on the topic, “insurance purchased through exchanges or in the private market—should be classified as federal revenues if there is an individual mandate and tight government control of the insurance market,” but not part of the federal budget if “there is an individual mandate and an active, loosely restricted private market, and if premiums are paid through nongovernmental exchanges or directly to insurers.”

In effect the CBO believes the government forcing you to pay premiums to insurance companies doesn’t make those premiums effectively a tax. But if the government also requires that private health insurance to actually be good, then it would be.

(snip)

CBO’s weird decision about what is or is not too much regulation was extremely detrimental to the ACA and is responsible for one of the changes made to the law during drafting. Senators initially wanted to require that 90 percent of premium dollars had to be spent on actual care — a medical loss ratio, which again, is well below international norms. The CBO wrote them a letter warning them that this regulation would push the ACA over their imaginary line. The CBO would have considered the entire insurance market part of the federal budget if that regulation was included. Thus legislators decided they would only use a medical loss ratio of 80-85 percent — a move that ended up actually costing the government significantly more.

(snip)


http://healthoverprofit.org/2019/01/09/cbo-will-score-all-health-reform-plans-as-nationalization/