With the GOP’s new health care bill limping into Thursday’s vote in the House especially after the brutal Congressional Budget Office report, the media are taking every chance to give it one more kick. But during Tuesday’s CNN Tonight, commentator David Gergen claimed that the CBO had put out an even more damaging report. “We’ve just learned in last 24 hours the Congressional Budget Office says that: if you let this bill -- Obamacare, just die, you will have more people with insurance than if you put repeal and replace into place,” he claimed. But the kicker is the CBO did not put out such a report.
According to the CBO’s own publications webpage, the only reports to come out in the last 24-hours are: S. 576, Follow the Rules Act (March 21); H.R. 680, Eliminating Pornography from Agencies Act (March 21); H.R. 1029, Pesticide Registration Enhancement Act of 2017 (March 20); and H.R. 369, a bill to eliminate the sunset of the Veterans Choice Program, and for other purposes (March 20). None of those reports deal with the GOP health care proposal. And no, it’s definitely not in the pornography bill.
After scouring the internet, the only thing that gets close to Gergen’s claim is an article in The New York Times with the headline “Fewer Americans Would Be Insured With G.O.P. Plan Than With Simple Repeal.” The author purports that:
But one piece of context has gone little noticed: The Republican bill would actually result in more people being uninsured than if Obamacare were simply repealed. Getting rid of the major coverage provisions and regulations of Obamacare would cost 23 million Americans their health insurance, according to another recent C.B.O. report.