CBO dismisses co-ops' relevance

Amid the coverage of the boost the CBO's scoring (.pdf) gave to Max Baucus's bill yesterday, an element of the CBO report appears to have gone mostly unnoticed, a wonky friend points out: The report paints co-ops — the leading alternative to a true public option — as basically irrelevant to the plan's cost.

The co-ops are dealt with, in fact, in a passing parenthetical remark:

(The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because, as they are described in the specifications, they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments.)

The CBO confirms what liberal co-op critics have charged: That they will neither cover many people nor put downward pressure on costs, the two supposed benefits of the public option.