I’ve been discussing arguments about the role of the individual mandate, how its possible absence might affect participation in the individual insurance market, and whether it is needed to prevent an insurance death spiral.  A related point is that the individual mandate will actually have almost no impact on what a majority of people using [...]

According to the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Paul Ryan (R-WI) House Republican budget outline, at least what can be analyzed given that Ryan leaves huge unanswered questions about how his tax provision would even work, the plan calls for massive cuts in public health care spending. The result of the cuts would be [...]

The Congressional Budget Office has looked at the potential impact of companies choosing to drop their employee provide health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act. According to its analysis if a large number of companies stop providing health insurance benefits it should cause the ACA on net to decrease the deficit even [...]

One thing that really bothers me is the number of people claiming that the Affordable Care Act will bring “universal health care” to the United States. Ryan Lizza’s makes this claim in his defense of President Obama at the end of his long story in the New Yorker, but he simply the most recent example [...]

During the health care debate Democrats worked very hard to promote the myth that reconciliation is an incredibly limited legislative procedure. They did this to create an excuse so they could tell their base the rules “forced” them to go with a corporatist health care reform package. In reality Democrats didn’t pass a more progressive [...]

The latest long term budget projections from the Congressional Budget Office assume that unemployment will be very high for years to come. From the CBO: CBO expects that the recovery will continue but that real (inflation-adjusted) GDP will stay well below the economy’s potential—a level that corresponds to a high rate of use of labor [...]

The Congressional Budget Office is out with a new report about the projected long term solvency of Social Security. The report reaffirms the basic fact that it will be roughly 27 years until the Social Security Trust Fund is exhausted. CBO projects that the trust funds will be exhausted in 2038. In the following year, [...]

The official Congressional Budget Office report on the debt ceiling deal has been release. From the CBO Summary: Establish caps on discretionary spending through 2021; Allow for certain amounts of additional spending for “program integrity” initiatives aimed at reducing the amount of improper benefit payments; Make changes to the Pell Grant and student loan programs; [...]

During the health care reform debate the Democrats put an absurd amount of focus on getting a pretty CBO score for the law. President Obama said the new law must reduce the deficit and have net outlays below an entirely arbitrary $900 billion dollars. To achieve this, the Democrats made some truly bizarre policy decisions, [...]

It is never a good idea to get focused on the politics instead of results of your policy. When you do you wind up making bad policy and still get hammered politically.