CBO: Health-care reform bill cuts deficit by $1.2 trillion over 20 years, covers 95%
Well, there goes another Republican talking point in their quest to kill reform and shield big insurance from any accountability. But at least they still have their principled stand against multi-paged bills.
KEY POINT: The cost of expanding coverage would exceed $200 billion a year by 2019, the CBO said. But new revenue in the package, combined with savings from program cuts, would outpace the cost of coverage, reducing the federal deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years. The savings would continue to accumulate in the decade thereafter, the CBO said, eventually slicing around $1.2 trillion from the nation's budget gap.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/18/AR2010031801153_pf.html
CBO: $940 billion health bill would help cut deficit over 10 years
By Paul Kane and Lori A. Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2010; 1:06 PM
An emerging compromise on health care between House and Senate Democrats would cost $940 billion over the next decade and expand insurance coverage to an additional 32 million Americans, congressional budget analysts said Thursday. Their preliminary report suggests the two-part legislation would bring the nation closer to universal health coverage than at any time in its history.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the measure would make insurance available to an estimated 95 percent of non-elderly citizens by dramatically expanding Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, and offering tax credits to an estimated 24 million Americans who would otherwise find it difficult to afford coverage.
The program would be paid for by slicing nearly $500 billion from Medicare and other federal health programs, particularly a privately operated insurance plan known as Medicare Advantage. Democrats also propose taxing, for the first time, the health benefits of some people who receive coverage through employers. That proposal focuses on the most generous policies, which economists say are helping to drive health-care costs skyward.
The bill -- to be unveiled Thursday and likely voted on Sunday in the House -- also would increase Medicare payroll taxes for wealthy families, in part by applying the tax for the first time to investment income.
The cost of expanding coverage would exceed $200 billion a year by 2019, the CBO said. But new revenue in the package, combined with savings from program cuts, would outpace the cost of coverage, reducing the federal deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years. The savings would continue to accumulate in the decade thereafter, the CBO said, eventually slicing around $1.2 trillion from the nation's budget gap.
In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), CBO director Douglas Elmendorf cautioned that the estimate is preliminary and could change as the agency reviews the final element of the health-care package, a series of revisions to the $875 billion health-care expansion that was passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve. House leaders hope to approve both measures.
But for the moment, Democratic leaders pronounced themselves positively "giddy" about the numbers and about the reaction from rank-and-file Democrats, who were briefed on the package Thursday morning. Pelosi called the package "a triumph for the American people in terms of deficit reduction." President Obama said the CBO report makes clear that his health-care initiative is "the most significant effort to reduce deficits since the balanced budget act" that heralded the economic expansion under President Bill Clinton.
The CBO report comes after days of House Democrats tinkering with the health-care bill. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said the effort was delayed by cross-Capitol efforts to make sure the provisions the House released Thursday would survive a maze of parliamentary objections awaiting them in the Senate.
The final piece of the health package will be taken up under rules that protect it from a Republican filibuster, but Senate Republicans can raise multiple objections under a complicated set of rules written by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) more than 35 years ago.
"One of the things we've been working on is to make sure that we comply with the Byrd rule, and do comply with the reconciliation requirements, and we believe we've done that," Hoyer said.
Hoyer told reporters the legislation is "the largest deficit-reduction bill that members will have a chance to vote on" in most of their congressional careers -- a key enticement for a bloc of undecided Democratic lawmakers who fear that the legislation would run up the mounting federal deficit.
The package contains "more deficit reduction than both the Senate bill and the House bill," Pelosi said. "This is really a triumph for the American people in terms of deficit reduction."
But Republicans said the CBO's score of the bill didn't make it any more palatable. "We're still going to spend a trillion dollars so we impose government-run health care on the American people," said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio.). "The American people want no part of it."
Democrats planned to post the text of the legislation on the Web site of the House Rules Committee on Thursday, Pelosi said. Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said he would begin asking wavering lawmakers for firm commitments soon thereafter.
Pelosi declined to say whether she has the 216 votes needed to push the measure to final passage. But with the conversion of the first "no" vote and the announcement of support from two anti-abortion Democrats on Wednesday, House leaders pronounced themselves increasingly optimistic that they will deliver the package for President Obama's signature this weekend.
Hoyer said the one-on-one lobbying campaign Obama has conducted in recent days has had an effect.
"He's been working members very hard," Hoyer said.
On Thursday, the president canceled a planned departure Sunday for a week-long trip to Southeast Asia. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama wanted to be in Washington for the conclusion of the health-care debate.
If the health-care legislation is approved Sunday and signed by Obama, the Senate-approved version would become law.
A separate piece of legislation, amending that sweeping health-care bill, would be taken up next week in the Senate, where key switches need to be made to the legislation's provisions on the federal subsidies and tax credits that will finance the measure.
The cost of the final compromise bill is $940 billion over the next decade, significantly more than the $875 billion Senate bill, but less than the $1.05 trillion measure the House passed in November.
The compromise is expected to offer more generous subsidies than the Senate bill to people who can't afford to buy insurance, to fully close the coverage gap known as the doughnut hole in the Medicare prescription drug program and delay implementation of the Senate's tax on high-cost insurance policies until 2018. The package is also expected to enact another of Obama's top domestic priorities, a dramatic expansion of the federal student loan program.