HHS' BS Report on the Cruz Amendment

The Washington Examiner posted the preliminary draft of an HHS report reviewing the Cruz Amendment's impact, this morning. It's pure bullshit not worth the time reading. Really.

Here are two of the line charts in the report. Can you spot all of the flaws? I'll give you three (there are more).

1. The starting points for the current law and the proposed amendment should be matching, since the amendment (and the bill it is attached to) does not affect 2017 enrollment (which has been long closed). Assuming they're taking into account people who drop their plans because the penalty is removed, Donald already instructed the IRS to not carry out the penalty question (a don't ask/don't tell for healthcare), so the starting points should be the same.
2. We already know 2017 enrollment numbers as the enrollment period closed and HHS published those numbers. There should not be a high/low split in 2017.
3. The 2017 enrollment numbers are counted in two ways: (1) Total of Medicaid + ACA qualified health plan signups and (2) Just the ACA qualified health plan signups. This means that, on net, either 20M or 12M people benefitted from the current law. Neither number is used in the charts.

It's not just 99% bullshit, but 100% pure bullshit. I'm just guessing here, but it seems like they outsourced the "analysis" to Stephen Moore.

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UPDATE: I hit the 'publish' button too soon. The CBO just released its updated review of the Senate's [Repeal and Delay] bill (without the CRruz Amendment) and the bill's effects are even worse than the original.

Instead of 22M more uninsured Americans (compared to the ACA) in 2026, the updated [Repeal and Delay] bill would increase that to 32M more uninsured. By 2026, some 59M Americans would be uninsured. Compare that to the 41~42M uninsured in 2013 prior to the implementation of the ACA, we're talking about ~17M more Americans uninsured compared to the year prior to the ACA.