I have been tracking the Affordable Care Act since its inception in 2009. And over this time, virtually every economic forecast about the law has proven to be wrong. There were estimates about how Obamacare would reduce the deficit, increase the number of Americans who are insured, reduce costs, and so on. None of these predictions from 2009 have proven accurate. And in fairness, a lot happened! Obamacare became a political football, the Supreme Court rewrote the Medicaid expansion, and the mandate penalty was repealed in 2017. The law was never allowed to go into effect as intended. But that is reality. Politics always intervenes in the real world.
The Congressional Budget Office is notorious for making predictions based on unstated assumptions that fail to account for foreseeable events. I have often wondered whether there is a liberal asymmetry here, where the CBO underestimates the benefits of spending more money, and overestimates the harms of spending less money. Liberal policies will always score better than conservative policies. But I lack the means to quantify this question. Still, despite all of these problems, CBO estimates are used to affect public policy.
The latest example in this saga has been the CBO's estimates concerning Obamacare enrollment. CBO predicted that if ACA enhanced subsidies were not renewed, enrollment would drop by more than 7 million. This forecast stimulated a vigorous debate in Congress, which nearly led to legislation. But, as things turned out, the estimate was not accurate. Not even close. The Wall Street Journal breaks down the numbers:
