Morning Must-Read: Austin Frakt: Tune Out the Noise and Read the CBO Report

Austin Frakt: Cut out the noise and read the CBO report: “All right, enough. I’ve read enough… about what CBO said….

You know what the best thing I read was? The CBO report itself… a discussion of myriad ways Obamacare will affect the labor market. Some are reasonably construed as the removal of a distortion…. Some other effects can be reasonably construed as the addition of distortions…. Then there’s the mixed bag of the Cadillac tax…. And there’s the employer mandate…. You can cherry pick the anti- or pro-distortionary features to hang this number on, to make the law look awesome or terrible. That’s what you’re seeing in the debate. But skip it…. No other health reform plan that expands coverage would do so without affecting the labor market in good and bad ways. Ultimately, this is not really a debate about Obamacare but about the effects of almost any coverage-expanding reform…. Tune out the noise and read the damn report.