CBO says health care repeal would deepen deficit

Nonno

Habari Na Mijeldi
"Rescinding the federal law to overhaul the health-care system, the first objective of House Republicans who ascended to power this week, would ratchet up the federal deficit by about $230 billion over the next decade and leave 32 million more Americans uninsured, according to congressional budget analysts.

The rough estimate by the Congressional Budget Office also predicts that most Americans would pay more for private health insurance if the law were repealed. The 10-page forecast was delivered Thursday to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), installed a day earlier to shepherd the new GOP majority. He immediately dismissed it.

The CBO's assessment, arriving as Republicans have mobilized to make the law's repeal the first major House vote of the new Congress, touches on a sensitive area for the GOP. Republicans are vowing to take tough measures to reduce the deficit, although they already have exempted the health-care measure from rules requiring that any spending increases be accompanied by offsetting reductions so that the net effect on the deficit is null.

The CBO's analysis provided an early glimpse of the brute force politics spreading across Capitol Hill and beyond in the new era of divided government. The broad changes to the health-care system, pushed through Congress by Democrats who controlled both the House and the Senate until this week, are among President Obama's proudest domestic accomplishments -- and now a central target of the GOP. On Thursday, congressional Democrats and their allies seized the budget analysts' prediction as ammunition. "It's plain and simple: We can't afford to increase the deficit by nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars, especially with the very first substantive vote of the 112th Congress," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana)."

Read more here.

The Weeper of the House "immediately dismissed it". Makes perfect sense! :killingme
 

ImnoMensa

New Member
"Rescinding the federal law to overhaul the health-care system, the first objective of House Republicans who ascended to power this week, would ratchet up the federal deficit by about $230 billion over the next decade and leave 32 million more Americans uninsured, according to congressional budget analysts.

The rough estimate by the Congressional Budget Office also predicts that most Americans would pay more for private health insurance if the law were repealed. The 10-page forecast was delivered Thursday to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), installed a day earlier to shepherd the new GOP majority. He immediately dismissed it.

The CBO's assessment, arriving as Republicans have mobilized to make the law's repeal the first major House vote of the new Congress, touches on a sensitive area for the GOP. Republicans are vowing to take tough measures to reduce the deficit, although they already have exempted the health-care measure from rules requiring that any spending increases be accompanied by offsetting reductions so that the net effect on the deficit is null.

The CBO's analysis provided an early glimpse of the brute force politics spreading across Capitol Hill and beyond in the new era of divided government. The broad changes to the health-care system, pushed through Congress by Democrats who controlled both the House and the Senate until this week, are among President Obama's proudest domestic accomplishments -- and now a central target of the GOP. On Thursday, congressional Democrats and their allies seized the budget analysts' prediction as ammunition. "It's plain and simple: We can't afford to increase the deficit by nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars, especially with the very first substantive vote of the 112th Congress," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana)."

Read more here.

The Weeper of the House "immediately dismissed it". Makes perfect sense! :killingme

The CBO is about as neutral and non-partisan as Keith Olberman.

It is a myth that they do not work for the party of the President.

Just as does the ATF, EPA, FBI,Dept. of Energy, and others who fall under his influence.
 

philibusters

Active Member
I saw two policy goals on the table last year in regards to health care

1) Getting more people covered, with a special focus on getting people covered who currently were uninsurable

2) We have an okay health care system, but there is a lot of inefficiencies that could be addressed that could bring down the overall cost (maybe only a little bit though)

The first one was the legislation last year addressed--and addressed in a way liking to accomplish its goal, people who couldn't get health insurance will no be able to purchase.

However, the legislation last year did not address the same policy goal--or it did here and there, but not in a way likely to get significant results. Rather than worrying about going backwards and undoing Obama's work they should focus on the second policy goal. You hear things like tort reform, streamlining process, allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines and so on mentioned here. I don't think last years bill really did a good job at dealing with these issues, it did some piecemeal stuff here and there to streamline some random process, but overall it did not really address this problem. Republicans have an opportunity to accomplish something rather than just trying to erase things the Dem's did and get us back to 2008.

Republicans should also consider whether they support the first policy goal. When healthcare companies have to insure people they will lose money on like they do under the new law, it means those losses will have to picked up elsewhere. On the other hand, we seeming all know or have some distant relative who maintained healthcare their entire life then when they got sick due to the fine print they were dropped and no new insurance company would pick them and the were out of luck. That is a problem that has seemingly been solved or as gone a long way towards being solved, as long as people are willing to pay their premiums, they can now obtain health insurance. We went a long ways to solving the uninsurable persons issued.
 

Baz

This. ------------------>
There goes that whole "everything has to be paid for" crap the Republicans were slinging.

Surprise! :party:
 
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Baja28

Obama destroyed America
The Weeper of the House "immediately dismissed it". Makes perfect sense! :killingme

What makes perfect sense is the fact that you morons think a massive program that will cost billions if implimented will cost more if discarded. Now that right thar is funny! :killingme
 

chernmax

NOT Politically Correct!!
The CBO numbers were based on the garbage numbers that went in and out came their garbage numbers! :coffee:
 

bcp

In My Opinion
can someone please point to any government run program that has actually not ended costing the taxpayer more than it originally claimed?

look at how the health care is being funded. the "loss" that will be seen is the loss of increases to the taxpayer. (not the leaches, only the productive ones)

There is no loss by not providing health care to the world, but there would be a loss by doing it.
 

chernmax

NOT Politically Correct!!
can someone please point to any government run program that has actually not ended costing the taxpayer more than it originally claimed?

look at how the health care is being funded. the "loss" that will be seen is the loss of increases to the taxpayer. (not the leaches, only the productive ones)

There is no loss by not providing health care to the world, but there would be a loss by doing it.

OMG where would one begin??? :otter:
 

Vince

......
What makes perfect sense is the fact that you morons think a massive program that will cost billions if implimented will cost more if discarded. Now that right thar is funny! :killingme
:yeahthat:


can someone please point to any government run program that has actually not ended costing the taxpayer more than it originally claimed?

look at how the health care is being funded. the "loss" that will be seen is the loss of increases to the taxpayer. (not the leaches, only the productive ones)

There is no loss by not providing health care to the world, but there would be a loss by doing it.
That's what I don't get about the Dem way of thinking. They are counting a loss for some kind of gain for a healthcare package that hasn't taken affect yet? You can't count something you don't have. What part of their fabulous healthcare bill has been implemented and is saving these billions they say we're going to lose?
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
can someone please point to any government run program that has actually not ended costing the taxpayer more than it originally claimed?

look at how the health care is being funded. the "loss" that will be seen is the loss of increases to the taxpayer. (not the leaches, only the productive ones)

There is no loss by not providing health care to the world, but there would be a loss by doing it.

Huge 'contributions' to the funding of Obamacare were/are total fiction; the huge assumed 'waste, fraud and abuse' savings from Medicare and the huge assumed "underground economy" bonus that was suppoed to be flushed out by mandating 1099s be issued for practically every business transaction. Phoney dollars...totally. But..the CBO is not allowed to comment on any of those kinds of crazy assumptions; the CBO is required to accept whatever inputs they are given by Congress and to crunch the numbers from there.

The CBO is therefore the classic example of an organization with an actual mandate to perform "garbage in/garbage out" calculations all day long.
 

glhs837

Power with Control
See, I think the CBO now uses the numbers supplied, as opposed to their own numbers. And if they are given crap numbers, crap is the result. I think this is what happened last year during the HC debate. Remember the CBO was predicting that the numbers did not euqal the sorts of savings the Dems were.


The head of the CBO had a "come to jesus" meeting with the President, and suddenly we get numbers that work. I suspect the word was given. "You only play with the numbers Congress supplies, you may not question those."
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
See, I think the CBO now uses the numbers supplied, as opposed to their own numbers. And if they are given crap numbers, crap is the result.."

"Now uses"..?? That is nothing new at all..that is how the CBO is legally required to operate and its always been that way. The assumption being, of course, that there would not typically be enough support in any given Congress to provide totally bogus numbers and assumptions to the CBO in the first place. But it has happened before..and it certainly will again. But the CBO are expressly forbidden from saying "but..but...this assumption is crap.."
 

Lenny

Lovin' being Texican
Folks, let's not lose sight of the fact that the Health insurance act will cost the Nation Billion$ if allowed to fully develop. The only way the Democrats could make it not break the bank was to include the Education bill and Reconcilliation bill in 2009. If all three are rescinded, it'll cost more. If only the Health insurance act is rescinded, it'll cost less.

Remember there are riders to this law that make it profitable. The Donks don't mention the smoke-and-mirrors #### they pulled to get this bill to not stink.
 

BernieP

Resident PIA
"Now uses"..?? That is nothing new at all..that is how the CBO is legally required to operate and its always been that way. The assumption being, of course, that there would not typically be enough support in any given Congress to provide totally bogus numbers and assumptions to the CBO in the first place. But it has happened before..and it certainly will again. But the CBO are expressly forbidden from saying "but..but...this assumption is crap.."

I heard a discussion of how the CBO has to do the calculations.
They must use the data supplied and cannot apply reasonable analysis.
For example, they cannot add the additional costs that will be incurred when employers drop their health insurance plans - something that has already started to happen. They cannot account for how people and corporations will respond to increased taxes and fees.

As the one analsyt said, how can adding more people, giving free coverage and more benefits DECREASE the cost to the government. People are going to look to save their money, they are going to adjust and find ways to save on health care costs, including taxes.
 

itsbob

I bowl overhand
"Rescinding the federal law to overhaul the health-care system, the first objective of House Republicans who ascended to power this week, would ratchet up the federal deficit by about $230 billion over the next decade and leave 32 million more Americans uninsured, according to congressional budget analysts.

The rough estimate by the Congressional Budget Office also predicts that most Americans would pay more for private health insurance if the law were repealed. The 10-page forecast was delivered Thursday to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), installed a day earlier to shepherd the new GOP majority. He immediately dismissed it.

The CBO's assessment, arriving as Republicans have mobilized to make the law's repeal the first major House vote of the new Congress, touches on a sensitive area for the GOP. Republicans are vowing to take tough measures to reduce the deficit, although they already have exempted the health-care measure from rules requiring that any spending increases be accompanied by offsetting reductions so that the net effect on the deficit is null.

The CBO's analysis provided an early glimpse of the brute force politics spreading across Capitol Hill and beyond in the new era of divided government. The broad changes to the health-care system, pushed through Congress by Democrats who controlled both the House and the Senate until this week, are among President Obama's proudest domestic accomplishments -- and now a central target of the GOP. On Thursday, congressional Democrats and their allies seized the budget analysts' prediction as ammunition. "It's plain and simple: We can't afford to increase the deficit by nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars, especially with the very first substantive vote of the 112th Congress," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana)."

Read more here.

The Weeper of the House "immediately dismissed it". Makes perfect sense! :killingme

How can repealing something BEFORE it happens, cost more??

This is Moron math at it's best.
 
The CBO is about as neutral and non-partisan as Keith Olberman.

It is a myth that they do not work for the party of the President.

Just as does the ATF, EPA, FBI,Dept. of Energy, and others who fall under his influence.

The CBO was just doing its job. As others have pointed out, its anaylsis was limited by the information it was given, the assumptions it was told to make, and the questions it was asked to answer.
 
can someone please point to any government run program that has actually not ended costing the taxpayer more than it originally claimed?

If you're talking about actual cost to the Treasury (as opposed to some subjective analysis of how it affected people and cost them money in tangential ways), then that's a softball lobbed over the heart of the plate - TARP.
 
Folks, let's not lose sight of the fact that the Health insurance act will cost the Nation Billion$ if allowed to fully develop. The only way the Democrats could make it not break the bank was to include the Education bill and Reconcilliation bill in 2009. If all three are rescinded, it'll cost more. If only the Health insurance act is rescinded, it'll cost less.

Remember there are riders to this law that make it profitable. The Donks don't mention the smoke-and-mirrors #### they pulled to get this bill to not stink.

The CBO's deficit effect estimate for the PPACA (HR 3590), by itself, was -$118 Billion trough 2019. The CBO's deficit effect estimate for the health care and revenue provisions of the Reconciliation Act (HR 4872) (above and beyond the PPACA) was -$6 Billion through 2019. The CBO's deficit effect estimate for the education provisions of the Reconciliation Act (HR 4872) was -$19 Billion through 2019. The point being, they didn't need to put both bills together (the Reconciliation bill included the education provisions as well as health provisions - those weren't 2 separate bills - so 'both bills' refers to the Reconciliation Act and the PPACA) to get a negative deficit effect.

Of course, that's to say nothing with regard to how meaningful the CBO's deficit effect estimates are.
 
How can repealing something BEFORE it happens, cost more??

This is Moron math at it's best.

There are several reasons - all legitimate, in so far as the CBO's deficit effect estimates go, and mostly predictable, in my opinion.

First, it wouldn't all be repealed before it happens - some of the expenditures have already happened or have been obligated (e.g. to states to prepare) or will have by the time the repeal would be enacted. Second, there have been changes to the original cost estimate of the PPACA (e.g. as a result of subsequent legislation and economic outlook changes). Third, the original cost estimate for the PPACA was through 2019. The CBO will soon be releasing a cost estimate for it through 2021, so this preliminary cost estimate for repealing it is through 2021 as well.
 
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