What’s missing from CBO scoring in health?

That is the topic of a JAMA Health Forum article by my USC colleagues Dana Goldman and Erin Trish. In it, the note that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) does good work, but the scope of their analysis is limited. CBO only estimates the impact on policies on government budgets; CBO’s remit does not evaluate…

Impact of NIH Funding Cuts on Drug Development

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report titled “How Changes to Funding for the NIH and Changes in the FDA’s Review Times Would Affect the Development of New Drugs.” The report evaluates two scenarios: A permanent 10 percent reduction in the amount of funding that the government provides to the NIH, and…

US Health Insurance Trends: 2024-2034

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released projections of US health insurance levels between 2024 and 2034. In the Hale et al. (2024) study, CBO estimates that: …92.3 percent of the US population, or 316 million people, have coverage in 2024, and 7.7 percent, or 26 million, are uninsured. The uninsured share of the population…

CBO projections of US health insurance coverage: 2023-2033

A paper by Hanson et al. (2023) summarizes the Congressional Budget Office’s projections around US health insurance coverage between 2023-2033. They find that low rates of uninsurance due to provisions enacted to combat COVID-19 will not be sustained as these provisions expire: Temporary policies enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have increased Medicaid and…

What is causing U.S. debt to explode?

According to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) 2017 Long-Term Budget Outlook, you need to look no further than entitlements for the elderly. Mandatory programs have accounted for a rising share of the federal government’s noninterest spending over the past few decades, exceeding 60 percent for the past several years. Much of the growth has occurred because…