The CBO’s Lousy Track Record on Coverage Projections

Published March 8, 2017 7:46pm ET



Congressional members and staffers generally act like their fellow Americans sit around waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to release scoring of major legislative proposals, much like they await the release of March Madness brackets. The truth is that most Americans hardly care what the CBO says. Moreover, they are right not to care: The CBO is often wildly off.

This has certainly been true on Obamacare. Seven years ago this month, the Democrats rammed President Obama’s namesake through the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote and with only three Democratic votes to spare. At the time, the CBO said that in 2017, 23 million people would be enrolled in insurance that they acquired through Obamacare’s government-run exchanges. Well, 2017 is here, and the actual tally is 9.2 million. So the CBO missed its projection by some 14 million people and a whopping 48 percent. That’s not even close enough for government work.

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