Posted on 03/19/2010 1:43:45 PM PDT by tarpit
How Much Does Health Reform Cost?
It figures that CBO would release its much-awaited score just as I was boarding a plane to go to a conference. So apologies for being slow to the party.
The headlines are reporting that CBO scored the health reform effort as costing $940 billion over the next ten years. Readers of this blog know that isn’t correct. The $940 billion figure refers only to the coverage expansions in the legislative package. There are also many other health reform initiatives–e.g., filling the “doughnut hole” in Medicare’s prescription drug benefit and increasing funding for community health centers and prevention efforts–in the legislation. Add it all up and the ten-year cost of health reform is about $1,072 billion.
Bonus question: How much does health reform reduce the budget deficit?
The headline claim is that CBO says the health reform package will reduce the deficit by $138 billion over the next ten years. That’s not right either. First of all, the health reform has now been stapled together with student loan reform in order to deal with some of the specifics of reconciliation. The student loan package accounts for $19 billion of the ten-year savings. So at best health reform should get credit for $119 billion in deficit reduction. But then there’s the CLASS Act gimmick. Lop that off and health reform really should be credited with $49 billion in deficit reduction. And even then it isn’t really health reform that’s creating those reductions. The health policy changes are actually expanding the deficit over the next ten years; other, non-health tax increases offset those increases and provide some deficit reduction.
Lest I be viewed as relentlessly beating on the package, let me offer a second bonus question:
Does the package generate budget savings only because it’s using ten years of taxes to pay for six years of benefits?
This appears to be a common refrain among opponents of the package. But it doesn’t hold up either. It is true that the new health benefits don’t start in earnest until 2014; that helps keep the ten-year sticker price down. But those six years of costs are offset by a combination of spending cuts and tax increases during those years, even if you strip out the CLASS Act gimmick. And in the second decade, CBO tells us that the bill reduces the deficit significantly more if–and this is a huge if–it executes as written.
How Much Does Health Reform Cost?
US$8,072 billion for four years
The author fails to account for the $200 billion a year in added spending that will result from the “doc fix” that Nancy Pelosi has PROMISED will be enacted later in the spring. If the bill is going to count savings that it steals from Medicare as well as the revenues from extending the Part A payroll tax to unearned income, then it is only appropriate to levy the cost of the Medicare doc fix as well.
Everyone knows that the AMA would have strongly opposed this bill had they not been bought off by this doc fix. In that case, Pelosi would have had no chances of getting 216 votes no matter what irregular or unconstitutional procedures she pulled out of her posterior.
Since this is government spending we're talking about, multply that by 800 percent, and youve got a more accurate figure
Why don’t they just say $1,072,000,000,000? Isn’t that 1.072 trillion?
Lets see Obama wants us to believe the following. Increasing the welfare health care recepients by 40 million will decrease our deficit by 190 billion. In addition there will be no cuts in medicare, medical, insurance premium payments, etc.. The quality of your health care will decrease nor will your taxes rise. I’m speechless.
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