Media inaccuracy again. Chasing not to have it after no longer being forced to buy it is not ‘losing it.’ Losing it was what happened under Obamacare, when we lost the plans and doctors that we liked.
Via Weekly Standard:
In the hour it was reported with smothering ubiquity that the GOP’s Obamacare replacement would cause 24 million individuals to “lose” insurance, the debate about government health care policy was given a bucket of buffalo wings, a wet nap, and a day off. It was about to get sloppy and awfully lazy.
“24 million people losing insurance is roughly equivalent to the population of” 15 particular states, Rachel Maddow tweeted, not one of them with more than five electoral votes, but, when listed vertically, appeared ominous. Almost 50,000 users have hit the retweet button.
That’s 50,000 users who have participated in the week’s biggest question-begging exercise. Nowhere in the Congressional Budget Office’s projections about the American Health Care Act did the agency say the bill would cause 24 million to “lose” coverage—cancel it or take it from them. The report, rather, estimated that the total number of individuals insured under the Republican plan would eventually be 24 million fewer than the total insured under Obamacare. Why is that?
At the outset, it’s because some consumers would choose not to buy insurance if they’re not penalized for lacking it. “CBO and [the Joint Committee on Taxation] estimate that, in 2018, 14 million more people would be uninsured under the legislation than under current law. Most of that increase would stem from repealing the penalties associated with the individual mandate,” the report reads. “Some of those people would choose not to have insurance because they chose to be covered by insurance under current law only to avoid paying the penalties, and some people would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums.”