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1 Answers to Questions for the Record following a Hearing on the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2018 to 2028 Conducted by the Senate Budget Committee 1 (May 3, 2018)

handle is hein.congrec/cbomayk0001 and id is 1 raw text is: MAY 3, 2018 Answers to Questions for the Record Following a Hearing on The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2018 to 2028 Conducted by the Senate Budget Committee On April 11, 2018, the Senate Committee on the Budget convened a hearing at which Keith Hall, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified about The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2018 to 2028.1 After the hearing, Chairman Enzi, Ranking Member Sanders, and other members of the Committee submitted questions for the record. This document provides CBO's answers. It is available at www.cbo.gov/publication/53800. Chairman Enzi Question. Following our last hearing in January, I submitted a question for the record where I requested that you provide an update on your analysis of the impacts on health insurance coverage as a result of the elimination of the individual mandate penalties. In response to my question, Dr. Hall, you stated that since that provision was enacted into law, CBO would describe any changes in the analytic methods used to estimate the individual mandate in its baseline projections this spring. I did not see a discussion of these changes in CBO's report. Does the new report include a description of changes to CBO's methodology for estimating the impact of the individual mandate on coverage? If not, please provide. Answer. The baseline projections incorporate revised methods for estimating the effects of eliminating the penalties associated with the individual mandate. The revised methods yielded a smaller effect on health insurance coverage than CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) had previously estimated. (These methods and the projections of health insurance coverage themselves will be described in a forthcoming CBO report.) Relative to the estimated effect of the 2017 tax act (Public Law 115-97), the updated meth- odology used for the baseline projections has reduced the effect of eliminating the mandate penalties by about one-third.2 The updated methodology was developed after reassessing the decline in the number of unin- sured people since 2012 and the reasons for that decline. CBO and JCT have long attributed only part of the decline to financial factors-specifically, the expansion of Medicaid coverage and subsidies for insurance obtained through the marketplaces. The agencies have attributed the rest of the decline to nonfinancial factors, including the simplification of procedures 1. See testimony of Keith Hall, Director, Congressional Budget Office, before the Senate Committee on the Budget, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2018 to 2028 (April 11, 2018), www.cbo.gov/publication/53721. 2. For more information on the agencies' prior estimate, see Congressional Budget Office, Repealing the Individual Health Insurance Mandate:An Updated Estimate (November 2017), www.cbo.gov/ publication/53300.

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