Nearly every media outlet is reporting that 24 million people will lose health insurance under the replacement for Obamacare, known as the American Health Care Act (AHCA), as if that were a factual number instead of a wild guess.  Maybe someday the media will report how far off the CBO is on almost all of its estimates instead of pretending the organization is factual.  We could do as well by throwing numbers into a hat.

In 2009, an estimated 30 million people lacked health insurance in the United States.  When a higher number is used, that includes over 10 million illegal immigrants, who were not supposed to be covered by Obamacare.  Of the 30 million, more than 5 million were eligible for Medicaid but had not signed up, more than 10 million were young healthy people who chose not to buy even though there were many cheap options, and several million chose to self-insure.  There was a small percentage of people who truly had a major difficulty buying a policy because of pre-existing conditions.

Instead of addressing the few million with major problems by expanding high-risk pools or subsidies, Democrats, with the support of almost all of the media, chose to take away choice from all 320 million Americans.

They wrote a 2,000-plus-page law with over 20 new taxes and over 10,000 pages of regulations.  The law added massive new mandates and dictated 100% what policies had to have in them.  There was no way it would reduce costs, even though that was repeatedly promised.  The media willingly went along with Obama saying no one would lose his doctor or his policy, and premiums will go down.  The media asked few questions.

The law also dictated that employers with more than 50 employees have to provide these Cadillac policies to anyone who works more than thirty hours.  Of course, employers pushed more people to part-time hours.

The law had the government take over student loans and pretend that would help pay for Obamacare.  It didn't.

There were also massive transfers from Medicare to the general fund to help pay for Obamacare.  Obamacare advocates pretended that would help Medicare.  As then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, Congress had to pass it to find out what was in it.  In other words, no one had any idea what was in it before it was passed, but the media supported it anyway.

Before Obamacare, McDonald's, Walmart, and others were offering slimmed down inexpensive health care policies for both full- and part-time workers, many of them suitable and affordable to their young, healthy workforces.  Obamacare did not allow these cheaper options because they didn't cover all the mandatory requirements of Obamacare.  Fast food got more expensive, and robots started getting the jobs.

My son graduated from college in 2007 and did not have health insurance.  I bought him a policy from Anthem Colorado (Blue Cross) for $85 per month.  It had a $2,500 deductible and a few doctor visits a year, and it covered prescriptions.  Cheap options like that were no longer allowed under Obamacare.

In 2010, the CBO predicted that by 2016, 23 million new patients would be covered by the Obamacare (ACA) exchanges.  The actual number was 10.6 million.  (Isn't it pathetic that even though it is the law and there are massive subsidies, only 3% of the public signed up to the exchanges six years after the law took effect?)  In 2010, the CBO predicted that the cost of Obamacare would be $948 billion in its first ten years.  By 2014, the CBO had raised the projected costs to over $2 trillion.

Why didn't reporters ask the Democrats' Senate leader, Chuckie Schumer, as well as Pelosi, why the CBO's projections on the Ryan-Trump replacement for ACA should be believed, since the projections for the ACA were so far off?

Not once have I seen any reporter ask Obama, Schumer, Pelosi, or any Democrat how the massive cost overruns in Obamacare have been paid for.  What did they cut or what taxes did they use to pay for the almost $1-trillion shortfall since they insist that all programs must be paid for?

President Obama said in September 2009 that the reason we needed Obamacare was that 30 million people weren't able to get insurance.  Today, an estimated 28 million don't have coverage, so why does everyone just repeat the number that 20 million more are covered by Obamacare without asking any questions?

Bad laws should be repealed and Obamacare is an exceptionally bad, expensive, job-destroying law.  Obviously, if there is no longer a mandate to buy insurance, some people will choose not to buy it.  There is no question that there will be cheaper and greater options that may suit every need if mandates are dropped.  It appears that when the CBO and others say premiums will go up, they don't take into account that people will choose the Ford instead of the Cadillac.

Let's take another look at that auto analogy: isn't it interesting that there is a law in all states that people who drive buy auto insurance, but a lot of people don't buy it?  The rest of us are charged for uninsured motorists.  That is the way health care essentially was before Obamacare destroyed our freedom of choice.

The reason the United States and almost all government entities are broke is because politicians buy votes by continually expanding programs.  Whenever a program starts, it almost never stops or gets cut, no matter how bad or expensive it is.  There are always victims.  The media as a whole almost always support the programs and taxes.

Reporters essentially repeat whatever numbers they are told and rarely ask any questions or do any analysis themselves.  Exhibit A is their faith-based belief in everything the CBO tells them, no matter what its record.  It would be a lot easier and cheaper if the AP, the WaPo, the NYT, and others just took the faxes from liberal think-tanks and Democratic groups and slapped a heading on them.  The news analysis would be just as valuable.