CBO: Senate Health Care Bill Cuts Deficit by $118 Billion
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) today released a revised cost estimate of the Senate-passed health care bill (H.R. 3590), finding that it would reduce the federal deficit by $118 billion from 2010 through 2019. An earlier estimate found that the reduction would have been $132 billion.
This will be another talking point for supporters of reform, who want the House to pass the Senate bill as is, and then make small fixes to the measure in a budget reconciliation package that requires on a majority vote (50+1). The reconciliation move is being used to avoid a conference committee to work out the differences in the House- and Senate-passed bills because any resulting conference bill would need to be voted on by a supermajority in the Senate—votes that health care supporters don’t have. As it is, reconciliation isn’t even a sure thing, as Sam Stein points out at the Huffington Post.
Just another chapter in the interminable health care debate.
Here’s how the CBO numbers shape up, according to snippet from the blog post:
“The gross cost of the proposed expansions in insurance coverage over those 10 years is now projected to be $875 billion, reflecting subsidies provided through insurance exchanges, increased net outlays for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and tax credits for small employers. Those costs are partly offset by revenues from an excise tax on high-premium insurance plans and net savings from other coverage-related sources, leaving a net cost of $624 billion for the coverage provisions. Other provisions affecting direct spending save $478 billion, on net—mostly in Medicare—and other provisions affecting revenues reduce the deficit by $264 billion, on net. Thus, the net effect on deficits of the bill as a whole equals $624 billion less $478 billion less $264 billion, or a reduction of $118 billion over the 2010-2019 period. In total, CBO and JCT [Joint Committee on Taxation] estimate that the legislation would increase outlays by $355 billion and increase revenues by $473 billion between 2010 and 2019.”