Hey, I’ve been misquoted!
It’s an age old complaint. P.R. battle-hardened public officials and celebrities usually roll with the punches when their comments are yanked out of context. You’d think the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, whose reports get waived around by partisans of every political stripe, would do the same. Someone misquoted a CBO report? Par for the course.
But the latest blasts from Republican officials and some press accounts lambasting “Obamacare,” a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act or health care reform, which used the CBO’s latest update on its projections for the law’s costs and effects, provoked an unusual response from the agency.
The anti-reformers say the CBO’s latest projections show a massive increase in the number of people whose employers will drop coverage due to the law. One report highlighted a “worst case scenario” to claim up to 20 million people could lose coverage.
Not so, says the agency. (To read more, click here.)
Merrill Goozner is an award-winning journalist and author of “The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs” who writes regularly at Gooznews.com.