The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), supposedly a nonpartisan government agency that analyzes budget proposals and the economy, has been an aggressive critic of President Donald Trump’s agenda.

On Thursday, the CBO released a report warning a move being weighed by the Trump administration would speed up the implosion of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, causing rising premiums and decreased enrollment.

[lz_ndn video=32980665]

Uncertainty about cost-sharing subsidies the government pays to insurance companies are mentioned by the CBO’s report as a significant driver of higher costs for the insured, CNN reported.

Trump has often used the subsidies as a bargaining chip with Democrats in Congress. If the subsidies are cut, it could hasten the demise of most of Obamacare. It could also force Democrats to the bargaining table.

But now the tactic, along with a White House cut in television and other types of advertising for Obamacare enrollment, has inspired the CBO to weigh in. Trump, the report concludes, is causing the latest woes in the long-troubled policy of Obamacare.

The White House and Obamacare critics blasted the report.

“Blaming President Trump for Obamacare’s woes is Orwellian,” said Robert Kaufman, a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, in an email to LifeZette. “The Democrats structured … [a] bad program to deliver less while costing more over time.  The Democrats wanted to create the gravitational pull to a single-payer [plan] that Obama could not achieve immediately.”

Critics of Obamacare note that even with tens of billions of dollars in subsidies from taxpayers, Obamacare premiums increased every single year since becoming fully enacted. The average individual market premiums more than doubled from $2,784 per year in 2013 to $5,712 on in 2017, according to HealthCare.gov, the federal government’s Obamacare website. That’s an increase of $2,928, or 105 percent.

“The CBO’s analyses on health insurance premiums and coverage have been off base for years,” said Ninio Fetalvo, a White House spokesman, in an email to LifeZette. “Premiums have more than doubled since Obamacare was passed, and a new analysis shows that in a majority of America’s counties with no insurance choice, premiums are skyrocketing at an even faster rate … Real reform, which lowers costs and expands choices, will only come from repealing and replacing Obamacare.”

Who do you think would win the Presidency?

By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from LifeZette, occasional offers from our partners and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement.

Trump has taken some slow but provocative steps toward getting what he wants from the Obamacare issue. Trump and the GOP-led Congress struggled for months to finally repeal the 2010 law, but fell one vote short in the Senate in late July. What hurt the repeal effort were CBO projections — disputed by Republicans — predicting millions of new uninsured citizens if Obamacare was axed.

Now, not only has the administration toyed with cutting subsidies, it has cut the annual enrollment period to six weeks. The CBO also claims higher premiums will deter participation in Obamacare.

The CBO’s Thursday report is considered the opening shot in a political war that is expected when higher premiums are announced. But don’t blame Trump, Republicans say.

“I have no doubt that the Trump administration isn’t promoting the law with the same financial commitment and ideological enthusiasm as the Obama administration, but that hardly means they are to blame,” said Matt Mackowiak, the president of Potomac Strategy Group and the Republican chairman of Travis County, Texas. “Obamacare is failing because it is stifling competition, and the blame game is in full gear before sharp premium increases are announced within weeks. It will be a hard sell for Democrats to convince the public that Republicans are to blame for Obamacare’s failures.”

Still, the CBO is trying.

The government number-crunching agency was created by Congress in 1974 to give the federal government objective analysis, as did many state research agencies. But as time went on, the Republicans noted the CBO often oversold liberal policy programs and undersold Republican reforms.

In 2010, gearing up to sell Obamacare, the CBO said the 10-year cost would be $848 billion. By 2014, that number jumped to more than $2 trillion, according to work done in 2014 by Jeffrey H. Anderson, a former Hudson Institute fellow.

Even CNN admits the CBO hype in 2010 to sell Obamacare.

“When the law originally passed in 2010, it estimated 21 million would gain coverage through them in 2016,” wrote CNN contributor Tami Luhby in March 2017. “Three years later, just before the exchanges opened, the agency upped the figure to 22 million.  That didn’t happen. About 10.4 million were actually enrolled last year, according to the Department of Health & Human Services data.”

The Republicans have one last shot to repeal Obamacare in the Senate this year, and that’s through a bill known as Cassidy-Graham. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said he doesn’t care how the CBO scores his bill, which could hit the floor the week of September 25.

“I just don’t care about the coverage numbers, because their methodology has proven to be wrong,” Cassidy told Politico. “And ours, frankly, empirically, is correct.”