Though it’s certainly not perfect, broadly speaking, The American Health Care Act, the GOP alternative to The Affordable Care Act, is a major step in the right direction for American families. Up for a U.S. House vote today, it offers a chance for the health care marketplace to lower costs for millions of people while improving quality, choices and competition. It also offers governors and states greater flexibility in Medicaid spending, enabling its future preservation. House Speaker Paul Ryan today correctly called the implosion of ObamaCare as a “crisis,” pointing out skyrocketing premium costs and a dramatic drop in plan options for families. The Congressional Budget Office and its various projections have been wildly off base in how it overestimated the government’s ability to lower health care prices and underestimated the private sector’s ability to lower prices. As I outlined over at Salon, here are three examples: CBO overestimated Obamacare’s exchange enrollment numbers by about 120 percent. CBO predicted 22 million Americans would enter exchange plans, yet only 10 million enrolled. CBO underestimated Obamacare’s impacts on private health insurers. CBO assumed private health insurers would be profitable under Obamacare, but many lost money, leading to the death spiral Congressional republicans predicted. CBO underestimated the market’s ability to control costs within Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit. In 2013, Medicare…
See original post: It’s Time to Pass The American Health Care Act