MSM Doesn’t Report CBO’s Analysis Of Uninsureds Proposals

Wonder why department: News.Google searches, using various combinations of “CBO” AND “Health Insurance Simulation” or “Health Proposal Analysis” fails to show any news reporting of the October 2007 Congressional Budget Offices’s “CBO’s Health Insurance Simulation Model: A Technical Description.”

Could it be because it validates either President Bush’s proposal or another as far less costly, less disruptive of existing markets that satisfy the 80% of Americans, less complex, or less likely to expand government bureaucrats into private decisions or greater control over health care, or more effective?

A subscription trade periodical, National Underwriter, “CBO Comes Up With Health Proposal Analysis Method,” however does have a summary of the analysis model’s findings:

Analysts at the Congressional Budget Officer say they believe subsidizing uninsured individuals would be much more efficient at expanding access to coverage than two other proposed strategies.

The CBO analysts come to that conclusion in a discussion of a new model they have developed to analyze the possible effects of health finance proposals.

Helping uninsured people buy individual or family coverage would reduce the number of uninsured U.S. residents by about 2 million, at a cost of about $1,050 per newly insured individual.

Providing an employer health coverage subsidy also would reduce the number of uninsured residents, but at a cost of about $8,900 per newly insured individual, because most of the money would end up subsidizing coverage for people who already have coverage, the CBO analysts predict.

Implementing a proposal by President Bush to replace the current group health deduction system with a $7,500 deduction for individual coverage and a $15,000 deduction for family coverage would reduce the number of uninsured residents by 6.7 million at a cost of about $2,500 per newly insured individual, the analysts estimate.

The Cover Story at National Journal, “Judging The 2008 Health Plans,” last week discusses Democratic and Republican presidential candidates’ positions toward health care reforms.

Both liberal and conservative judges gave Clinton and Edwards high marks for aiming to achieve universal health care coverage, for example, even though some judges oppose reaching that goal by mandating that individuals have insurance. And on the question of whether a given proposal would hold down federal spending, conservatives and liberals alike scored the Republicans higher than the Democrats because of the enormous price tags attached to the Democratic plans -- about $100 billion a year.

Republicans, according to this article, are lagging in the contest for public perceptions.

"Conservatives have to come up with a way of selling market-based [health care] policies, but so far we haven't been able to," said Republican pollster Fred Steeper, who worked on George W. Bush's 2000 presidential bid as well as the elder Bush's 1988 and 1992 campaigns.

A GOP operative who didn't want to insult Republican candidates on the record said, "The market-based rhetoric is in itself hollow: You have to translate that into a couple of things like preserving choice, controlling costs, less red tape. They're not doing a good job of articulating that."

However, the CBO appears to have presented Republicans with the hard data and analysis to present their case. Wonder why the major media has not reported the CBO analysis?