Jonathan Gruber, an economist and top architect of Obamacare, says the Senate healthcare bill likely will receive a better score from the Congressional Budget Office than its House counterpart only because the GOP senators who devised it are “cheating.”
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor made an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday to talk about the draft bill, the details of which were revealed on Thursday. It aims to partially repeal and replace parts of Obamacare, but isn’t as drastic as the House version in some areas, including in how it provides additional funding to stabilize the Obamacare health insurance exchanges.
When asked about the viability of the bill, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he wants a vote on it next week, Gruber said he is unable to make an accurate prediction as his “political prediction meter” was broken on Nov. 8, Election Day.
However, he did comment on the CBO score the draft bill is expected to receive next week.
“I know we’re going to get a horrific CBO score next week,” Gruber said. “The CBO score will be horrible but it won’t be as bad as the House bill because the Senate is cheating by pushing the damage out by a few years.”
The CBO predicted that the House version of the bill would result in 23 million more people becoming uninsured by 2026 and would cut the deficit by $119 billion over the next decade.
“No, it’s not better than the House bill,” Gruber continued. “It’s just cheating, taking advantage of the fact that CBO is a 10-year window.”
Gruber argued that insurers exiting Obamacare doesn’t “prove a failure,” but rather “it just proves it’s a new dynamic market.”
Earlier in the week, Gruber said that the GOP proposal was a “middle finger to representative democracy.”
