Healthcare

The White House Score of Trumpcare is Worse Than the CBO Score

Written by SK Ashby

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score of Paul Ryan's repeal and "replace" bill is pretty bad, right?

It must be fake news!

Actually, the Trump White House estimates that 26 million would lose coverage under the bill, 2 million more than the CBO's estimate.

The preliminary analysis from the Office of Management and Budget forecast that 26 million people would lose coverage over the next decade, versus the 24 million CBO estimates. The White House has made efforts to discredit the forecasts from the nonpartisan CBO.

White House officials late Monday night disputed that the document is an analysis of the bill’s coverage effects. Instead, they say it was an attempt by the OMB to predict what CBO’s scorekeepers would conclude about the GOP repeal plan.

If they really were attempting to predict what the CBO would say, that obviously means they're using the CBO's numbers as a baseline. It also means they already had a fairly good idea of what the score would be when the White House began to publicly embrace Paul Ryan's bill.

We can only assume Trump would gladly sign the bill if it does reach his desk. That seems unlikely at this point, but anything could happen.

If the GOP's Obamacare repeal plan collapses, their entire legislative agenda will be at risk of collapse. Paul Ryan's agenda is at risk of collapse.